Identity Crisis

The student I came with left yesterday for another collection in southern Xinjiang, so I'm more or less on my own now. I'm still working in the lab here, and I have a little duckling troop of assistants for anything that I need, but for all intents and purposes I'm alone. This is good and bad. Good because the peace and independence is kind of nice. Bad because now I have to feed myself and find ways of accomplishing what needs to be done. First for feeding myself. I do okay for the most part. I can't read Chinese or Ughyur, so menus are a bit challenging since English is a rarity, but I'm easily able to convince some of the students to join me on occasion. I've gotten a couple of instant noodle bowls from the quickie mart across the street just in case I find myself in a bind. And otherwise I'm planning to just go places on my own and point at what other people are having. No big deal. Eating alone sucks though. I think this is why I like street food so much. I love to be able to get something on a stick that is mobile so that I can give myself sustenance while wandering about and not have to sit sadly at a restaurant table in a foreign country by myself. But I will do what needs to be done. The cool thing is that I do know of a foreigner-owned bar/restaurant in town that I've been to a couple of times. That's going to be nice every once in awhile. I met the owners when I was in kashgar last year, and they're cool guys. The food is okay - not great but at least I can read the menu. And they have a full bar which rocks. A full bar including a very well stocked top shelf of scotches. And considering the currency value difference between here and home, I think I may have to make my way through that shelf over the coming weeks. It's a good opportunity to try to new scotches without going completely broke.

So that's all okay, but somehow obtaining money this morning was a colossal pain in the butt. I needed to pay the driver who brought me animals this morning, and my student was supposed to leave me with funds before he took off. He forgot but then told me that I should just use my own money. Fine except that I hadn't yet withdrawn any of my own money because his funds were covering everything, and I only had about $30 in cash. So Mr Ma, the driver dude, took me to the bank this morning. Two hours later, I finally have funds. I was nervous about it being a problem because I wasn't able to withdraw from the Bank of China ATM when I first got here. I emailed my bank, and they said I had input something wrong. So this morning I tried again. FAIL. Ok, no big deal. I knew the money was there and my account is fine, so we took a number, and I went to the cashier window to have them withdraw the funds. I hand over my bank card and my passport. She looks at the back of the card and my passport signature and says "The signature is not the same." The signature stripe on my card says "see id". Something I've been happy with up until now because at home it makes people ask for my license more often. She also seemed okay with this until she looked at the name in my passport and said "This name on your card is not your name." Crap. HUGE problem in China - they don't get the concept of a middle name. My bank card says "Kimberly L Cooper", and my passport says "Kimberly Lynn Cooper". I showed her that the signature in my passport says "Kimberly L Cooper", and the photo is clearly me, but she just kept saying "no no no, it's not the same." I almost didn't get on a flight in China last year because my ticket said "Kimberly Cooper" instead of "Kimberly Lynn Cooper." So I asked to speak with the manager. Same thing. "This is not the same, you can't use it." He said I have to call my bank and get a new card with the correct name. Okay, yeah, let me get right on that. So I kind of lost it a little bit. I managed to keep my temper in check, but not my tear ducts. Something about being soooo tired and ready to be home and then having someone question my identity was just too much to bear. I just wanted money. I didn't want to explain the American tradition of middle names and initials, and it wasn't doing any good anyway. I just wanted money.

Two banks later we finally found an ATM that took my card in exchange for cold hard cash, so all is well. No one needs to panic that I'm destitute in the streets. I'm glad I was with Mr. Ma though. He was our driver last year and is a very nice young guy who speaks quite good English. All very good because he and I were able to communicate to get this done, and he knows me well enough to not freak out when I sort of lost my composure.