Safe and Sound

I just read that China had a big earthquake today and have already gotten one concerned email, so I'm checking in to let you all know that we didn't feel a thing here.  The earthquake was south of us in Sichuan province, so that's sort of like feeling an earthquake in LA all the way from Seattle.  No rocking and rolling here.

All in all it's been a pretty uneventful day.  The rest of the team left just after breakfast to meet with the local forestry bureau officer to enlist his support and help organizing a team of rodent collectors.  They think they will be able to start work tomorrow night, so I should have the first round of animals on Wednesday.  That will keep me very busy and keep the cabin fever at bay.  I got some laundry done this morning with much effort and exaggerated gesturing.  The woman who seems to run the operation of this place, Guo, doesn't speak a single word of english and doesn't read the romanic spelling of Chinese, pinyin, which is how my pocket translator is organized.  So that was pretty useless - I can look up questions but then I can't understand the answers.  She got very animated and pulled out a pen and notebook to try to explain the washing machine to me in chinese characters, but it's just like doodling artwork to me.  Fortunately we're both excellent mimes, so we managed to get the job done with a lot of laughs.  She's very very sweet, so I think I'll get along here just fine. As a bit of trivia - I bet the only people reading this who know I placed 8th in a miming competition are my parents.  My performance was "washing the dog". See, mom and dad - that was a useful skill after all!

Then I read most of the rest of the day - The Brothers Karamazov.  I have to give a shout out to my last rotation student, Johanna, for spending some time with me in the used book section at the Harvard book shop the morning before I left.  She did an excellent job helping me to find big thick books with thin light pages that would be difficult to read very fast.  So I have about 5,000 pages of classical literature and the diary of Robert Oppenheimer to pore through in the next 6 weeks.

Then this evening when the menfolk returned, we went into the town for ice cream and a walk around the "market".  It's not much of a market - a bunch of small shops in a big open building.  Toiletries, grains, some basic equipment and household supplies.  Everyone seemed to be playing some game or another - mahjong, cards, Chinese checkers (though I guess they don't call it "Chinese" checkers here). And there was a pool table!  So Shaoyuan and Shui Tao played a quick game of pool before we wandered back here.  At least there might be that to do - a game of pool for about 11 cents isn't such a bad way to pass the time!