Ready to Roll

Beds in China are commonly very hard, and my poor old back is sore.  This is the first comment of my posting because my bed is the part of China that I'm most familiar with right now.  I've spent way too much time in this hotel room in the last 2 days, and I'm starting to go a bit nuts.  Yesterday it did end up raining all day, which it really really needed to do.  I think it was actually raining mud - the air was so thick and brown right before it started.  But since it was nasty out, we opted to stay in.  And I slept most of the day.  Today I was eager to get out and do something.  We had to go to the Bureau of Forestry to pick up some lab supplies we ordered and have those plus a box I brought shipped over to Urumqi.  For those not familiar with our saga - we're working with a different group this year from last year, because we encountered a "conflict of financial interests" with the group we worked with last year.  This year, we were originally supposed to work with folks from the National Academy of Forestry in Beijing, but the processing of my visa paperwork was apparently too "politically sensitive" and difficult, so those collaborators pulled out.  After a brief third collaboration with the Chinese version of the CDC in XinJiang, we are now set to work with XinJiang University.  But since as of about 3 weeks ago, we were working from Beijing, we went ahead and ordered lab supplies through the office in Beijing.  So now all of that has to be shipped.

The guy who showed up to pick up our things didn't have the box that was requested to package some of it, so Shaoyuan and I had to hop in his little van and go with him to his "company".  Ironically, we ended up just a few blocks around the corner from the hotel where we stayed last year.  Oddly, we turned down an alley into another alley and pulled up to a house.  That was the shipping company - 5 young guys running an EMS mailing station from their home.  It's supposed to arrive in Urumqi in 3 days, so we'll see what happens.  I do a lot of following and smiling without really knowing what's going on here.  Note to self - must try harder to learn Chinese.

So then after a trip to an outdoor store for boots for Shaoyuan and pants for me ($11!!!), he convinced me that he just wanted to come back to the hotel.  I wanted to try to keep him awake since he slept all day yesterday and didn't sleep last night at all.  He was in pretty bad shape today.  But I didn't hear from him for dinner tonight and decided to just leave him alone.  I think he's going to be miserable again tomorrow.  Oh well.  I could get out and do some sightseeing by myself, but I saw so much last year.  I'm kind of done with Beijing.  We're going to get out and about tomorrow, and I've requested Beijing duck for dinner tomorrow.  Mmmmmm, Beijing duck.....