it's been a long time

So I made it back this morning from Jimunai which is a couple miles from the Kazakhstan border in northern XJ. I had an amazing visit with a friend from a couple years ago. I finally got refreshed after spending some time with her and I am in a much better state emotionally, spiritually and physically. She is Kazakh and I stayed with her family in their home. I can't understand kazakh too well yet, but most everyone else can understand my uyghur. My friend says Kazakh is like baby uyghur, and I think I understand more what he means by that. They always use the informal / intimate / rude pronoun for "you" so it ends up sounding like everyone is talking to a little kid all the time. I don't get the full feeling of that because I can't really understand tone of voice in Uyghur yet, but some day

Anyways, there are some new pictures up.

Same place as always

Went to Kashgar but now back in Urumqi

I just got back early this morning from Kashgar which is very close to the Tajikstan and Kyrgystan borders (the very west tip of China). I went with my classmates and mostly spoke english, but we talked to a lot of shop owners and things. Kashgar is definitely a more Uyghur city. It's also quite small and a lot more "third world" in some sense of the world. I think it's still a modern place. We stayed at the well known Seman Hotel where most of the foreigners stay. I think there are probably some stricter regulations about where they can stay in the city. They are only allowed to live in one area that is newer. It was pleasant to be in a non-chinese city because, IMHO, I feel that most Chinese cities contain the same blah blah buildings that don't have a lot of characters. Maybe that is shallow, but I like the dirt buildings and even the more modern uyghur ones. Urumqi feels pretty sinofied except for certain parts of the uyghur section of town.

At the hotel there were a lot of europeaners that we spoke with some. Most of them were quite fascinating, but not really doing a whole lot productive. We met a couple who are finishing up the first of a five year bike ride around the world. They have a website at www.tour.tk. They are in Kashgar until Tuesday.

I have a lot more to say, but I am going on about 4 hours of sleep after getting back really early in the morning.

My lead to meet up with a community here fell through, but I may have another one with some of the Uyghurs at the school I am at. I am treading carefully though because I may rub some people the wrong way when I ask some questions. It's okay, but just keep it in mind.

I will be doing more travelling coming up soon. Some with the students here and then my trek to Kazakhstan right around August 1st. One of my friends who I met last time I came to china will be coming to Urumqi on the 21st of July so I hope that time is very beneficial. I may go to Altai with her to visit her family if there is time.

I have been doing a lot of thinking, and I could return here for more school or for teaching and continuing Uyghur study. I never really stick things through and it would be good to continue work here and actually see things happen.

I realize with my last entry here, things seem kind of crazy in my day to day life, but that's not really the case. I have a pretty relaxed uncrazy day to day life, so don't worry. I study most of the time, but there are just occasional wacky days where interesting things happen. I am taking care of myself and not doing anything stupid.

some new "old" pics

These are from almost a month ago, but I realized I forgot to put them up:

Day with SOS Children and climbing mountains

a longer one

I know I have not really given you a lot of info about what's happening here, but I am getting overwhelmed right now with culture shock. I am currently in Korla staying in a hotel with my friend Abullahwali for the weekend. The trip has been really good, but trying in so many ways. I just don't have patience for the day to day stuff of interacting with another person. He speaks English very well, but I have been trying to speak Uyghur the whole time. I have a terrible time trying to understand his accent, and he drops a lot of letters and speaks quickly. I have asked him to speak slowly, but he doesn't slow down. I get really tired with that and get in a bad mood. But I guess more than that, he just bosses me around and for some reason I take it personally. That may be because we got into a sort of an argument on the train ride--it was rather personal, so I'm not gonna talk about it right now, but basically he was saying that I was lying about my personal sexual life. However, today I did end up having some good conversation with him and was about to talk to him some about important things, but it was more of an initial survey than anything fruitful. But it eased a lot of the tension that I feel. I've been struggling with grace constantly.

I wanted to talk to my parents, but haven't had time to go to an internet cafe--I expected them to call, and my mom finally did today, but I couldn't talk because my cell phone is really expensive in this city. So it will be another week before I can speak with them. Frustrated about that.

One of the major culture shock experiences I've had is the relationships between men and women. I am not sure I will adjust to this at all. At everything, men and women are separated. At events and everything, it's strange. I guess I tend to appreciate Uyghur women more than men because they aren't always trying to get me to drink hard liquor. I mean, I have drank a little bit, but it's really not worthwhile. And when I don't drink, it tends to really kill the party because there is someone there who "isn't having fun". The nice thing about being a white American sometimes is that I don't have this "face" thing to uphold when I don't drink. "I could care less what other people think." Maybe it's nice not to have, but I should probably be more cautious about making those kinds of generalizations. A couple examples. First, my friend Xadatgul was trying to call me on my phone, but I was trying to call her back on the hotel phone because it's free. But I couldn't talk to her quick enough, so wally told her to call the hotel phone. Then he told me she wouldn't call back because a uyghur guy had shamed her. That was another thing that kind of aggrevated my nerves with him because he is kind of short and rude, and I don't like the idea of shaming another person. She, of course, did not call back, so maybe I will have to talk to her when I get back. Maybe there is no problem, but it's hard to be sure. The second thing that I think is strange is that my friend told me he will not speak to girls around his age because he is afraid of temptation. So today, we went out with these guys who are Iskandar's friends and they brought two girls with them (the way wally talked about it beforehand made it seem like they were going to be some kind of prositutes or loose women or something--sorry for the weird terminology), but wally said he would not talk to them at all because he didn't want to be tempted to have sex. Of course one of the girls was one of the guy's daughter and her friend, and it was nothing extraordinary at all. But I felt incredibly awkward around them all day. I kind of get the feeling after hearing various things he has said that either he thinks he has no self-control, or he really doesn't. I guess I am in support of being cautious, but always not talking to girls seems kind of too much. But it's a different kind of culture, and he seems to be very cautious, if not kind of a moslem male dominating sort of folk. In my opinion it's pretty hard to go from talking to someone to having sex with them. But it does make sense in my mind with him. oh well. I'm kind of throwing some judgements out there.

Despite the frustrations, this trip has been really good and I have had a unique experience because of my connections. I got to pick fruit off of trees in an orchard. Had lots of food. Finally saw the desert, so now I can tell you about it a little.

So today, I went to a mountain in the morning with wali. it was a long way up, but it was good. I will never understand why they pave sidewalks up mountains in China, but they do. The view was pretty and I got to see some deserty mountains. I like the desert, even though there isn't a whole lot of life and such there, but there is something intriguing about it. It is beautiful. Took pictures, not all of them turned out as well as I would hope. When we returning, Iskandar's friend called me to ask us to go to eat. So they came--one of them in a police car, the other in a black car. So we had a kind of police escort with the lights running for most of the way back to the city. Quite peculiar. They took us to a nice restaurant and we ate--I had polo which was actually really good--sometimes it's really just oil and rice. This one was the whole deal with fruit and other things. After the food, they dropped us back at the hotel for a while to get ready to go to some lake. This is when they were going to pick up some girls (for us? not so sure about that). Well, we got ready, and headed down to the car. We started driving to this lake which apparently was an hour and a half away. Wali said that these people are really crazy because they are really rich. Basically, everything I've done in Xinjiang has been pretty free, and this is no exception. The scenery on the way was very beautiful and I saw more of the dunes of your desert. We pulled up to the lake-the largest freshwater lake in China. There was something different about the lake than others I've seen. It was almost completely tranquil, there were virtually no waves. The water was very clear and it just looked like glass. You couldn't see the horizon because it just looked smooth all over. It was really gorgeous. So we sort of met those girls, but we were never introduced. I asked one of them her name when I was standing next to her, but I cannot remember it. Something like Rohugul, perhaps. I know that's wrong, but ti's more satisfying to try. But it wasn't a bad situation. Anniwar (the father guy/police officer) paid for us to go out on a SeaDoo, which was fun, and when I got out further into the lake, it was so surreal because it was just flat water in every direction. Very beautiful. We came back and started to eat kawaps when a sandstorm hit, and everything went crazy. we made it back to the car a mite dustier and drove back. I havne't been in a sandstorm before, but it was exciting. So much wind. And so full of sand too. I imagine it did wonders for the car's paint job. The guy dropped us off at our hotel and said we would have dinner a little later. We didn't eat dinner and he never called, so that's that. The "girl thing" was rather ineventful, and I am still boggled by the whole thing.

Any ways, this leads me onto another kind of peculiar story. There are a lot of dark things in this story, just to warn you. Last weekend, Subi's brother in law, Wildan, called me and invited me to something. I said I would come to whatever it was. Apparently it was a "Black party" which is distinct from a "colored party" with the distinction being whether or not females are present or not (in the black case, none are present). Women add color. So he picked me up and asked the usual "harak iqamsiz?" (or "Will you drink hard liquor (white alcohol in particular)?") that I am asked almost every time I meet someone. I said I would drink a little. So we went to pick up some of his friends. The first of whom was Umut, the most famous tv host in the province. and then a couple other people. We stopped at this restaurant and ate a very small, but very expensive amount of leghman. Then we drove to a kazakh oy park of sorts. That is, a yurt. Basically some outdoor restaurants tents to sit in and there are cooks who prepare food for you. We started eating and talking a bit. They almost wouldn't speak to me in Uyghur the whole time even though their English was rather poor. There were five other people besides myself. They had brought a guitar and a dutar. So we ate a lot of food and played some music and sang some songs. At some point, they bought some boxes of the ak harak. I drank a little bit, maybe the equivalent of 2 or 3 drinks over a long period and then I started being firm about not drinking anymore. Walihan was one of the guys, he does a lot of business with the former soviet union countries, so he speaks russian and he was sitting next to me, so we spoke most of the time. He was kind of a wild guy. Reminded me slightly of a Russian guy. But after about 5 or 6 hours, he told me that he wanted to take me to get a foot massage. Of course, when I think of massages or massage parlors in China, I am rather doubtful about their respectability, or it seems like something similar to prostitution. After he talked about it for a while, I said okay, figuring if it was a bad situation, I could just leave. I know it is bad to be in situations that could potentially be "tempting" or whatnot, but that is not at all to me. A few hours later, after everyone was drunk, and dozing off, it was decided that it was time to go. There is, of course, nothing better than being in the middle of nowhere at night and having to choose which drunk person to get in a car with. Wildan, the guy that I came with, who seemed completely asleep, or with the guy who wanted to take me to get a foot massage. Since Walihan seemed the most alert, I went with him. He was driving a little bit crazy, joking around, but in general was pretty safe. We arrived at the massage parlor probably about midnight. Of course, somewhere in between, he did ask me if I actually wanted to have sex with a Uyghur girl (in much more colorful language), and I made it clear that I did not want to have sex with anyone else except my future wife after I get married. This of course broke into more of a dialogue on why, which is because I believe, and that was a good entryway into some later conversation. Anyways, we went into the parlor and got ourselves ready. Got a foot massage. I have never had any real massage before, but honestly it was kind of painful. Afterwards my feet felt good, so I think it did help But the bad thing was they did cupping on my back--I had no idea what they were doing, so I just went along with it,but that hurt bad, and when it ended, my back was basically destroyed with purpleness all over. I am not so sure what I think about Chinese medicine, but my body is not adjusted to it. During the massage, of course Walihan drank more alcohol. I drank less than half a small paper cup of beer. We did have some good conversations, and he told me a lot of interesting things that I'm unfortunately not going to get into right now. But he told me that there was a reason that I was here, and that there was no way that I would be able to come to this place as a believer if he hadn't been behind it. He also thanked me for trusting him enough to come with him. He said that not very many people would trust him enough to actually come with him. After drinking some non alcoholic beverages and eating some tomatoes (?) we headed to the car where he made me prank phone call his uyghur friend in canada. That was kind of strange, and then he drove me home. He taught me that I already know the Persian numbers because they are the days of the weeks. Apparently, even not many uyghurs know why the days of the week are named the way that they are. So, overall, I was pretty uncomfortable a lot of the time in all that, but I prayed about it and decided to just trust what God would do, and everything turned out fine, albeit rather crazy. It does take a bit to phase me, I've been in some really strange dark situations a lot before, such as at Grinnell. We do need to flee from si n, but we also need to be light in dark places. I think I probably won't drink anymore, which is a good idea, but I hope that there was some witness there. I am going to have dinner with his wife, him and kid sometime soon.

Here is a picture of my back for those interested:




My friend Aynur (#1) and her classmates made a movie about a day of my life two days ago, so soon I will actually have some video to show of a little bit of my life here. Im going to try to find a video camera and record some people talking/singing/dancing if it is possible.