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22 May
China
Subject: the galloping steeds are turned back to fertilize the ground by their droppings
how about some of the tao te ching written in chinese?
RULING A KINGDOM IS INDEED LIKE COOKING A SMALL FISH
My chinese character recognition skills are highly suspect. I've been
focusing more on learning uighur as that is what everyone I'm in regular
contact with speaks. Met Adil this weekend and filmed him and his 2 tiny
girl offspring on the tight rope. Adil has very cool special dawaz shooes -
red leather soft sole boots with big golden stars. He invited me to tour
with him to Kashgar in a couple weeks which is pretty exciting, although I'm
a little unclear on what sort of transport this will involve. Especially as
I'll be taking either rahida or her brother ilyar as a translator. Ilyar
claims I'll just go in the car with adil, but this seems unlikely as adil
already has wife and kids and manager to fit. Maybe I can follow in busses.
So tonight am moving out of the university guest house to majira (daughter
of mijit, manager of adil) and husband's house. I'm hoping this will mean
hot water 24-7. This 2 hours of hot water a day is getting to be a real
drag.
Wierd. this computer lab suddenly smells like burning toast.
Went out last night with this guy joe from detroit who's been here for a
year teaching english. He says the winter was brutal. Coal smoke so
thick you couldn't see more than 100 yards in front of yourself and
temperatures around -32 celcius. I don't know what that translates as
exactly, but guess it's pretty damn cold. I met him a couple weeks ago but
he was too busy to go out because his girlfriend was in town. She's since
split. He's got another friend, Aaron, coming this weekend who teaches in a
nearby town. They're both here on exchange from some Princeton program.
Joe has a philosophy degree. No idea what one does with such a thing, go to
remote foriegn countries and teach english I suppose. Aaron is moving to
urumqi soon along with his korean girlfriend to work at the radio/tv college
as an english teacher. He actually brought a computer with non-linear
editing software here. Hopefully I'll meet him this weekend - apparently he
knows where to get much the coveted mini-dv tapes locally.
Not too much else to tell. Have been sick the last couple days and mostly
just sleeping and drinking my new favorite ANAR XAIRBITY (pomegranate
juice). Hot pink thick pulpy sourness. yum.
any gossip? boy stories? disasters? do tell.
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