Jackie was kind of right

This is going to be difficult to write in a way that most people at home will understand, because Chinese culture is just so phenomenally and fundamentally different from anything we're used to. But when Jackie Chan said last week that "Chinese need to be controlled", he was kind of right. I know that sounds bad. I think that's why there has been a backlash against him over it. But after talking to a lot of Chinese people over the years, I think most would agree in principle with his intentions. And if you look at where the arguments against him are coming from, it’s mainly Hong Kong and Taiwan – not so much mainland China. I've had several political conversations about US democracy versus the "Chinese style of governing". I choose to write it that way because many people in the states call it "Communism", but in the words of Inigo Montoya "I do not think that word means what you think it means." China did used to be a communist (small c) country in the times of Chairman Mao, but the current "Communist" (big C) party isn't like the old days. The current government is struggling to balance support for the common people and the good of society and support for a booming capitalist economy. The key to understanding China is in understanding the first part of that. Capitalism in business is something the Chinese want but only if it doesn't negatively impact what's good for society. And democracy is an entirely separate issue.

Start with the communal attitude. If you wake up early on any morning, you will see large groups (as in 20-30 people) practicing Tai Chi in parks and parking lots all around the country. By mid-afternoon there will be public ballroom dancing in those same places. And late into the evening is the exercise time. All of these events are free and open to the public. I'm currently in a really small town, and a few nights ago witnessed a group of 60, mostly women, engaged in an intricately choreographed dance routine with a small ball that was balanced on the surface of a racket. People here do everything in groups. The result of that much interaction as a group is that you think as a group. Not that the individual doesn't have their own thoughts and aspirations, but the connection to the group is such that everything is done in consideration of the impact to society. Sure some of that is the product of generations of "propaganda" such as the national slogan leading up to the Olympics "Work towards a harmonious society", but at what point does something become propaganda because it was initially part of the culture and then the propaganda cements it as essential to the fabric of culture?

Which is where the idea of sacrifice comes from. I was talking with my graduate student last night about the swine flu (the conversation inspiring this post). He said that it is the responsibility of governments to make people stay at home. I laughed and said, "That would only work here". He got very agitated with me and tried to convince me that if it is for the good of society, then people must do what their government says. I tried to explain that yes, while I agree in principle, if the US government tried to mandate that people not go to work or out to run errands or visiting friends and family, the average person would essentially say "screw you, I have a life to live". It would have to get very bad before the individual would see how staying at home is a benefit to *themselves* to not come into contact with all of those other people out there who might be sick. A very different way of thinking from "I must stay home because I might get others sick". That's evident even in the way people in this part of the world treat an ordinary cold. Throughout Asia you will see people wearing face masks. I asked once in Japan why this is the case, and someone explained to me that people who are sick wear masks in public to keep other people from getting sick. But the part of the conversation that took my breath away was when my student used an example: "sometimes when a house is on fire the fire department has to destroy other houses around it that aren't on fire to keep the fire from spreading." I couldn’t believe I was hearing him say that. And it dumbfounded him to hear that *never* would happen in the US.

So back to governing and the Chinese needing to "be controlled". It's not that the Chinese aren't capable of making decisions and taking care of themselves. They have local elections that are more like our idea of "democracy". But the Communist Party determines internally the structure of parliament and selects the president and prime minister from prominent party officials. Chinese citizens don't vote for higher offices. And most of them don't want to. They trust the party to do what's best for society because that's how their culture is structured. They fear that with 1.3 billion voices in the mix, chaos would follow. The personal motivations of 1.3 billion people can’t possibly determine what’s best for the group as a whole. Each province is so different. People in big cities are different from small towns and rural areas. There are 56 minority groups in addition to the overwhelming majority of Han Chinese. The average Chinese citizen believes that democracy would bring the downfall of social stability. And that's what is the most important to them. You can see it in the fact that the #1 news headline before the swine flu was the protests in Thailand. China has lately been obsessed with Thailand as an example of a failing democracy, and the Thai instability has barely made a ripple in US news. You can argue that people think this way because it's what their government is telling them, which is entirely true and potentially a mechanism of self-preservation of power. But it's also a snake eating its tail. The government promotes these "stability" memes to preserve its own authority because preservation of their authority promotes social stability, which is what the country needs and ultimately wants.

And I'm not defending all of the government's policies, I'm just saying that I understand why the Chinese people are generally happy with the way things are. But while their way of governing has done a lot to keep China knitted together and moving forward, they've also done a lot of horrible things. Cordoning off villages to control protests and controlling the media message and the internet (no YouTube). Destroying low income housing in Beijing before the Olympics because it "looks bad" and forcibly relocating millions of farmers from below the high water line of the Three Gorges Dam project. And what I think is the saddest policy is the relocation of millions of Han Chinese to Xinjiang and Tibet to "out-populate" minority groups who they see as a threat to social stability resulting in the watering down of some of the world's richest cultures.

I really do wish I understood and could read Chinese to get a better grasp on this place. It's fascinating. I've been here four times now for a cumulative of about 6 months in China, and I feel like I'm just now starting to kind of "get it".

Today my lunch had eyeballs...

Tiny little shrimps. Some of you may have noticed that my food obsession from Spain has been absent in China. There's a distinct reason for that, besides last year's food poisoning. While there is a lot of good food to be had here, much of it is nothing to write home about. The cook at the field station is actually quite good, which is nice if you have to eat the food that one person is preparing three times a day for more than a month. And I'm lucky - a lot of field biologists and paleontologists get by on canned and freeze dried non-perishable things. We are at least in civilization. But I'm a little repulsed by plates of fatback swimming in grease, and the long slices of some sort of vegetable in a shrimp gravy with tiny arthropods staring their beady little eyes at me. Especially when I've seen piles of these dried shrimps out in the hot sun swarming with flies. But you eat what's put in front of you. Even if it's the freshwater fish that everyone here is so fond of. It's really tasty, but there is no concept of the "fillet" here. Fish is either served whole with the head and fins intact, or it's chopped up into little bits bones and all. I just can't work that hard for my food, and I've been stabbed in the tongue too many times by needle-fine ribs.

But one really good thing is that students here have finally started talking to me. You can set your calendar by Chinese shyness - 2 1/2 weeks after arrival. The same happened last year. I sit in the cafeteria, walk through the labs, wander the grounds of the field station, and people smile with a tiny bit of fear in their eyes. Then eventually a few will start to say "hello", and finally they are brave enough to show that they really can speak and understand me. They spend those first two weeks afraid that their pronunciation and grammar isn't good enough and worried about bothering me. So two of the students - they're plant biologists working on other projects, not with us - brought me fruit the other day as an opportunity to reach out and be brave. That was really sweet. And it'll fend off the scurvy...

Ironically, those here who talk to me the most are the ones who know the least English. One is Ms. Guo who runs this place. As in she's always clipping around in heels, barking orders, changing sheets, and vacuuming hallways. She's super loud and smiley and seems to absolutely love me even though we can't understand a word the other is saying. She's the one with whom I pantomimed through a laundry washing last year. Another is a woman who seems to be here with her boyfriend. I don't know her name, but in my head she's the nagging girlfriend. She's always squawking at her super shy boyfriend and getting him to wash her dishes. She speaks absolutely no English, but she sometimes follows me around watching me work and talking up a storm as if she expects me to suddenly understand Chinese. She's been trying to teach me some Chinese words, but I'm afraid I'm a horrible language student. The third super outgoing non-English speaker is the laughing Buddha. I also don't know his name, but he was here last year. He's the one who got me in an awful lot of trouble over a bottle of scotch and a bottle of whiskey. Ouch. One should never do shots of really good expensive scotch. And one should always be wary of the words "how much baijiu can you drink?" Unfortunately my colleagues now know I have a pretty hefty tolerance, and they often answer that question for me before I get a chance to understate my "talent".

Mauled by Chinese teenagers

Today was the first day since I was sick that I felt well enough to go for a run which was good since I was starting to develop a little bit of cabin fever-induced depression. All is well now though. I strapped on the sneakers, traded glasses for sunglasses, plugged in the iPod and took off past a busload of Libyan agriculturalists. Self-conscious much? Fighting off side-splitting pain, I must have had an awful grimace, but it didn't seem to deter the group of school kids leaving the local museum, and they greeted me with waves and "hellos". Little did I know they would lie in ambush as I made my circuit through town. I raced a man with a propane tank on a bicycle down a stretch of road, then made the turn down a tree-lined street beginning to sprout its green. Past a public toilet (aka "brick sh*t house") that reeked so foul from 100 yards away I would have to be splitting in half from the most earth shattering bodily functions to enter, and past a man pissing on the side of the road who had decided to take the better option. Around another corner past the coal-fired power plant (I think that's what it is) where there is a conveyor elevator running from a pile of blackened earth to the upper reaches of a building that stands next to a smokestack belching foul fumes. Past the water jets that spew what must be the heated water that serves to cool the power plant. Everything around it is lush green from the extra warm moisture but dusted in black and stinking of the garbage dump nearby.

I was just thinking "This sucks. I must find a new running route cause this is the pits" when the trap was sprung. My predators were waiting on the corner of town they knew I must pass to go back in the direction from whence I'd come. The field station sits at the end of a road shared by the school, and I usually cut across the park on the corner. But without seeing the throng of kids, I decided to round the full length of the sidewalk, and when they saw me approaching they came running shouting "hello" and waving hands. So I shook a dozen hands, said "hello" answered "where are you from", heard them say "you're beautiful" and posed for photos. But they wanted more. So we ran into the park and I was at their whim to play a game. I'm not sure of the name of the game, but it was tons of fun. I was their protector, and they all lined up behind me, about 12 of them. I was supposed to keep them protected from another of their teachers. The long chain of students spiraled and whipped behind me as the man tried to get past to tag one of them and pick them off one by one. Fortunately for my screaming lungs, their English teacher arrived with curiosity to see the new treasure her students had found. So again with the questions, "How long have you been here? Where are you from? What do you do? What University are you from?" Oh that last one was a doozie. I demurely said "Harvard" knowing it would get a reaction but unprepared for the ear-piercing shriek and applause emitted from the bunch.

At around that moment the 10th graders arrive to flank my rear, and I was surrounded. 50 eager teenagers all talking at once. Only one had ever seen a foreigner. And again with the questions. And again when I said "Harvard" the latter half shrieked. And one of the new arrivals said what I really and truly thought sounded like "you have big ass". I must have looked shocked, she looked embarrassed, I smiled, paused, thought for a moment, and realized she was saying I have big *eyes*. Oh yes, much better.

They all wanted my MSN, email address, phone number, wanted to know how long I'm going to be in town, and if they can come visit me at the field station in my free time. I think I just gained a whole new group of friends which may make this place a little more bearable. And they're adorable. One of the girls ran across to the market to get me a bottle of water, and a dozen of them walked me to the gates of the field station. They were protecting me from the crazy lady. There was an old hunched woman in the park who picked up money that fell from the teacher's pocket during the game and agrily refused to return it. And I made an oops, kind of like cursing in front of your friend's kid. I taught a whole group of youngsters the word "crazy". I told them it wasn't a good word to use but then heard one of them refer to the old woman as crazy about five minutes later. Kids are sponges.

I'm glad the timing was good because we're now in the grip of another dust storm, and the sky has turned from blue to gray to brown.

Sheepies...

No jerboas today because there was a big rain storm last night. It actually started as a tremendous dust storm - quite a problem in this part of the world with an infinity of sand to the north. I was sitting peacefully at my desk yesterday evening when it suddenly sounded like the end of the world outside and I turned to see that day had turned to brown night. I feel sorry for the folks who were out in a fields at that time. But the wind ushered in a big rain at around midnight that calmed down the particles in the air, and today was quite a lovely day. But since the sky was falling right around jerboa catching hours, no animals...

We made good use of the day though. After much effort, hair wringing, and gnashing of teeth, I convinced Shaoyuan that we should make contact with the people who collected 5-toed jerboas for us last year and start getting them thinking about doing the same again this year. So we walked into town this afternoon and asked a driver to take us to the home of a nearby Kazakh family. They're sheep herders and also get paid by the government to monitor the lands for illegal activities. It's all public land, but there is some illegal poaching and harvesting of wild herbs. So the government pays local people to monitor the land and also lets them raise their own animals. The guy said they sold 300 sheep last year. He has no formal education of his own, but he's done well enough to be able to send all three of his kids to good schools. That's another thing about China - there is the "one child" policy, but it applies primarily to the Han Chinese. Members of many (if not all) of the ethnic minorities are exempt from this policy and are allowed to have multiple children.

We sat and visited in their house for a little while, and then his oldest son asked if we wanted to go see the sheep. So we drove out further into the desert to a place where we had to scramble over a sand dune and walk down a little valley to a flat clearing where there was a corral full of baby lambs and a yurt. The adult sheep are grazing freely, but they keep the babies closer. Then I guess the adults come and go to nurse the little ones. And they have a horse for herding the sheep when they're off grazing. The oldest son came on horseback to meet us at the top of the dune and let Xiao Lin and I take turns in the saddle for a few pictures. And his mother invited into the yurt to sit on carpets on the ground and have salted tea with sheep's milk. Awesome. I know folks at home have trouble with the concept of salted milk tea, but it tastes great. Especially in the hot desert when you're feeling a little parched all of the time.

Speaking of feeling dehydrated...I have a cold. Blech. It was great to get out and get some sun, because my energy is a lot better now than when I woke up this morning, but I've been drinking liters of water and it all seems to be coming out my nose. I have a good feeling this won't last long though. It's just an ordinary cold - not another case of the Chinese Green Nasties.

A little bit of thumb twiddling...

The good news is that the animals have started to come out and are beginning to breed. The bad news is that they aren't in great numbers yet, so it's going to be a little bit of a waiting game. The nights are still quite cold, so I think they're staying down in their little burrows and are only coming up in short stretches to feed and scurry home again. The folks collecting for us have been out about 4 hours in a night and are only seeing a handful of animals compared to 80 in a night when we were here later (when it was warmer) last year. But this means we'll get the early embryos when they're ready to start collectively "doing their thing".

In the meantime I'm finding ways of entertaining myself. I've learned from these field collections in China that I'm really good at being alone. Much better than I ever thought I was actually. I'm quite content to sit here and read some science for awhile, catch up online with friends, read a book, and just chill. The student I work with, on the other hand, is a little bit needy. So he comes round several times a day wanting me to entertain him. Which usually involves getting into some sort of argument about something. Maybe that's in part why I'm enjoying being alone so much. But the other good thing is that I'm starting to go running again. It's an awesome stress release and gets some of that cooped up energy out of me. Plus it's fun to see people's expressions. First of all, no one here goes running. So they all seem to think I'm a little insane with my sneakers on and my headphones in jogging around town. Second, my pale whiteness glows like the moon on a clear night around here and have the fairest hair around. So seeing me jog by is probably a bit of a sight. But most people smile, a few stare too awestruck to make much of an expression, and the kids will sometimes even say "hello". I had to jog through a group of about a dozen 10 year old boys the other day. Oh boy that was funny...

There is a young man in the town who I wrote about last year and again a few days ago. He's a musician who has been struggling with his friends to balance their passion with reality. It's a sad story, really. They collectively dumped their entire savings into producing a CD and printed thousands of copies with confidence that it would sell well and they would be on their way to stardom. Unfortunately that didn't happen, they're all broke, and they're in varying stages of depression. This young guy seems to be coping alright, but apparently several of his friends have gotten into drugs and drinking in excess. He said that's common in the music scene in China right now. It sounds like they're collectively going through a little bit of the middle class angst ridden thing that the US music scene saw in the 90s. "Oh woe is me, I have more money now but I'm still not happy with my life and no one understands" kind of thing. But he still loves music and was excited to hear that I brought my computer with my whole iTunes collection. So he plugged in his MP3 player, and I transferred about 3 Gb of stuff to him. That should keep him busy for a little while at least. He brought another bandmate last night, and we all sat up talking and listening to tunes for awhile. It was an interesting conversation (through translation) about traditional versus modern Chinese music styles, western influence, and language differences between English and Chinese. I asked, because of the tonality, if it is more difficult writing lyrics in Chinese and if there are any tonal constraints to the music so that you don't change the meaning. He said no, because the musical tonality is usually so different that it doesn't change the meaning, and that people with different regional dialects still understand each other. I understand, but it still seems funny to me. When people ask where in China I've visited before, no one ever understands me. I can say "Guilin" and "Chongqing" pronounced correctly but without the right tonality, and they look at me like I've spoken gibberish. So then I have to draw it out on a map or describe the location and sights, and then they say "Oh! Guilin" with an entirely different emphasis on the syllables, but it doesn't sound all that different to me. Language is fascinating...

Mmmmm, camel ticks...

I think I've discovered the worst thing about doing field work in the desert in China. Camel ticks. Yucky little critters. I was told last year (but never saw them since I was restricted to the field station due to the impending Olympics) that there were "insects" in the desert that chase you and crawl up your pants. Well today I saw them. They aren't insects. They're camel ticks. About 1/3 of an inch long, and they apparently hang out in the sand to keep cool until they somehow sense a passing potential host. Then they come scurrying out after the individual (camel, cow, horse, sheep, person) in a mindless race to hitch a ride and latch onto a meal. So you have to keep moving faster than this ticks. And ideally gaters are a good idea to keep them from getting under your pants cuff. I'm itchy just thinking about this. I think I'm going to strip down in front of the big bathroom mirror and have a quick check even though I know I'm clean. They just give you the creepy crawlies thinking about them. Though I'm so glad I'm not a girly girl. I had a "discussion" with my student the other day about women doing fieldwork, because he didn't like the idea of bringing along a young female PhD student. He wanted a male student who could help him "in the field" (his favorite phrase). I, of course, got my feathers ruffled that he was lumping women into this wimpy category when I know loads and loads of women who can get just as or dirtier than the boys and can hold up to the heat and hard work. Mmmm, maybe not this one so much. I adore her. She's been so sweet and helpful all week. But she's a city gal. The mere idea of the ticks got the better of her, and there was a minor melt down when she saw the first one. I, on the other hand, was immediately fascinated by their single-minded hunting skills. I'm not sure if it's head, movement, or CO2 that they sense, but they're incredibly quick and efficient.

But we did arrive today, which is excellent. We packed up the van this morning with all of our belongings and supplies and made the hour and a half drive north from Urumqi to the field station at the edge of the desert. It looks perfect. It's warm during the day, and the vegetation is starting to come out, but it's still pretty barren and cold at night. Apparently the low temperature just broke freezing last week, so things seem to be on track for an early collection. We had a look around and set some traps (industrial mouse traps) this afternoon to see if we catch anything overnight. There did seem to be footprints in the sand that look about right for the three toed critters we're searching for, so I think they are out already. We've negotiated with a few local folks to go out and collect live ones tonight, so we'll see what the situation is tomorrow. Either we're going to be very very busy very soon, or we'll have a few days to wait and re-assess.

The drive out to the desert was spectacular (pre-tick). The young musician guy from last year came to pick us up, and then we went to collect his father. His father is apparently a well known local hunter and knows how and where to find these little rodents. This was one of those days I wish I understood Chinese fluently, because the father is fascinating. He kept trying to share survival skills about how to find water in the desert, info about the ticks, descriptions of native plants, but all of this had to pass through translation from the two students. At least I'm more connected and more involved this year, but the father said to me (through Xialin) that he wishes I understood Chinese, because there was a lot he wanted to teach me. There's a lot I'd love to learn.

But the trip started with a failed start. Of the car, that is. The musician guy (I don't know names, so they're the musician and his father) got a new car since we were here last year. But it's apparently having starter problems and therefore has to be push-started. And it's a small SUV, so it's quite a collective effort to get this thing moving in the middle of the road with big trucks and motorcycles whizzing past. I guess it's supposed to be fixed tomorrow which will be nice, but not nearly as interesting for our story.

The dunes are about a 20 minute drive from the field station, and it's a fascinating drive. The immediate area is farmland, but it's incredibly salty soil. Right now the whole surface of the ground is covered by thick white crystals. It's amazing any plants can come up in this earth. But they are. Then the further out you go, the more barren and sandy it becomes. The agriculture changes from farming to nomadic grazing, and there are yurts (round canvas tents - temporary homes) dotting the roadside. The local sheep and goat herders ride on horseback, so you see flocks of sheep in movement followed by a couple of mounted Chinese "cowboys". It amuses me that they're so fascinated by the American cowboy, when they've got for all practical purposes their own version right here at home. Then right before the landscape changes again to tall loose sand dunes, there was a huge herd of camels. Bactrian camels. Of the two-humped variety. They're endangered, and there are apparently only about 400 remaining in the wild, but there seems to be a pretty healthy domestic population since I've seen them all over Xin Jiang (even rode one last year). Hence the accompanying population of foul camel ticks...

And I just checked out clean. No hitchhikers!

Trans-continental cat surgery

I find it a little difficult to start this blog post without first commenting on our poor kitty back home. Darren and I have been in touch all day because he was dealing with a pukey kitty last night and ended up taking her to the animal hospital at about midnight. They did x-rays and now ultrasounds and seem to think she has swallowed something that is obstructing her intestine. Of course that's serious, and of course they may have to operate. But that means $$$. Damn cat. We love her dearly. She's awesome. She's more doglike and incredible laid back than most cats. But both of them get into EVERYTHING. They play with string, sticks, coins, bread ties, the round plastic bits that seal milk caps, plastic bags, etc, etc, etc. So I'm not terrible surprised, because we're always finding things to take away from them. But geez this sucks. It's the responsibility you take when you adopt a pet, but it's also good practice for kids. Right now I'm not so sure I'm ready to be sitting in an emergency room with a kid who swallowed something. It makes me appreciate the day spent in the hospital when my parents thought my sister swallowed a bottle of perfume. In fact she'd dumped the perfume in the bottom of my purse, *and* it was Tinkerbell which is by definition non-toxic since it's made for kids. *BUT* I can now understand that panicked feeling when something's just not right...

But I'm on the other side of the planet and a little bit helpless right now. My local concerns are more of the "can we get this done" nature. Starting with "can I wait long enough for the water from my sink to run clear that I feel it's safe to make my morning coffee?" Yeah. I woke up this morning to brown water from the tap. It happens. And after 5 minutes or so it was clear, and I made my coffee. I *have* to have my coffee. I'm fully over the jetlag, but for some reason I'm still hitting the afternoon slump. Then it was off to the lab to autoclave all of our water from the weekend. The drawback to having only one autoclave and only one person who runs the autoclave is that when people like us hog the time, everyone else has to wait. I felt a little bad about that. There is a whole lab of about 60 people who are all dependent on this one piece of equipment that we used for about half the day.

And I gave a seminar today. That's fun, because the students here are just starting to get interested in developmental biology because of my visits to this university. They are so much more well-read and more enthusiastic after just one year since our last visit. I always watch the audience when I give seminars to see the smiles and head nods. If a few people are responding, then I know that I'm being understood and all is okay. Last year was a little rough both because of the language difference and the new topic, but this year I had the head nods and smiles. So I think they got it. We also have a PhD student working with us this year who will be taking on a developmental project for her thesis. That's exciting, because she and I will have several weeks to get her started with her understanding. There are peripheral things I'm learning from working here. One is that we're incredible lucky in the states (and canada, australia, NZ, UK...) to speak English natively. Science functions in the english language. Folks here have to learn good science, but they also have to be proficient in english to be able to understand the huge body of literature and to contribute to the community in a meaningful way. The other thing is that my time here is not just for the benefit of furthering my own research. The faculty and students see me as an opportunity to connect with a different part of the research community, so there's a huge teaching aspect. In addition to directly training one of their students, I'm asked to read manuscripts before submission, and I get asked often how to apply for PhD and postdoctoral positions in the US and if I'm willing to act as a reference on their behalf. There are little things about conducting field work in other countries that you don't anticipate when you take on a project like this.

After our seminars, we were invited out for the annual "welcome to Urumqi" banquet. This is quite a sight. The location was the "Tian Shan Virtuous Country Hotel" which is one of the fanciest places in town, even if it has an incredibly odd name. The formal banquet is always held in a private room, and this place was swank with real bamboo in the clear glass walls and glass shadow box tiles in the floor with sand, rocks, and shells. There were 9 of us around a big round table with a lazy susan in the center. The food comes out dish after dish after dish in the center and gets spun around so that your culinary scenery is constantly changing. And then there's the alcohol. I never remember that when someone asks "do you drink alcohol?" they don't mean beer or wine. So when I say "yes if others would like", I forget that means Chinese rotgut. China is not known for it's fine liquors, and there's a reason for that. And they love to drink even though they aren't so tolerant. Just moments before the first toast, the senior professor's wife reassured me that some people in China try to get you to drink too much, but not this lab. And it wasn't "too much" but it was more than enough considering the strength and flavor of this stuff. So it starts with the senior professor lauding his praise on us and thanking us for gracing them with our visit. Then we eat for a prescribed amount of time. Then his wife made a similar toast wishing us much luck in this collection season. Then more eating for a prescribed amount of time. I'm quite proud that I've learned the Chinese way with this custom because just as I felt the correct amount of time had passed, Shaoyuan confirmed that by starting the third toast. Then after an equivalent amount of time, it was my turn to give our praise and thanks for their assistance and assure them that this project could not succeed without their help. Then it moved around the table from person to person with gentle nudging from the senior professor at the appropriate times for the next person to speak. And much alcohol was drank by all. It's all formality and custom, but it's highly entertaining (and useful) from a cultural perspective. This is how the wheels of progress get lubricated.

So now I'm off to sleep and be ready to leave for the field station tomorrow. I think we have everything ready, and it seems that our arrival is very early this year which is excellent. The temperature is warming quickly, so the animals will probably be out of hibernation this week, but the last snow was just last week so there isn't much vegetation. I think we may get our first pregnant females in a week or more so we are in excellent timing for collecting the stages for our work. Even though many of you don't really know what that means or the real importance, it's very good. Keep your fingers crossed that all goes well!

Have patience, fat grasshopper...

So somehow everything here seems to take longer than it should. I spent 5 hours this morning trying to acquire a 20 liter jug of distilled water. 5 hours. With the assistance of 5 students. And apparently there is one technician in a lab of about 60 people who runs the autoclave, and he doesn't work weekends. So we have to wait until Monday to sterilize anything. Fun. It's sort of the moral of the story here. I need something accomplished. I ask. Multiple enthusiastic students hop to my side to help find what I need, but they're all speaking to each other in Chinese and not so much to me about what it is that I need. And then I wait. And wait. And wait. And eventually what I need manages to turn up.

But on the upshot, I have arrived in Urumqi and am settled into my hotel on the edge of campus. I made it with no trouble, but my suitcase of research supplies almost got me into trouble. First my belongings were overweight. You're only allowed to check 20 kilograms of luggage, and my things together with personal travel items and research supplies came to 33 kilos. So I had to take a slip saying how much I was over in weight to a counter where the guy calculated how much I owed. Then I had to go to a third counter to pay the amount and get a receipt which I took back to the guy at the second counter who gave me another slip of paper to take back to the ticket counter so that they would issue my ticket. Which is when the x-ray machine triggered an alarm on my bag. So I had to go behind the ticket counter to try to explain to the guy that I am a researcher with harvard and none of my materials are toxic. Fortunately I had a copy of my chinese business invitation letter and a business card (very handy in China) to verify my purpose and identity. He let me and my things through but not until after he and two other people manhandled all of my belongings. This is exactly why we can't just fly back to the states with our specimens and have to instead ship them through an expensive courier service. Every piece of luggage is x-rayed before it's accepted, and they search everything. It's not so much a matter of "if" I got caught carrying things out of the country, it's a matter of what to do "when" they confiscate a month of hard work. So we spend the money and a great deal of time doing things the legal way.

And then there was the wait for my departure. Where I had my photo taken by a curious young Chinese man. I think he was trying to be sneaky, but since I was sitting alone near a wall, I can't believe he would be taking a photo of the plant or the newspaper stand next to me. I'm used to being an oddity here. No problem. But what I don't understand is that no one seemed to blink an eye when the tall lanky American man walked past in a straw cowboy hat and orange ostrich boots carrying an intricately tooled leather shoulder bag. Even I took a double glance at that one.

For some reason the lab head here sent a woman I have never met to pick me up. She's a very sweet young PhD student who may be coming with us to the field site as an assistant, but she wasn't in the lab last year when I was here. She apparently asked the few other foreigners if they were me before I finally came through baggage claim. And then she hit me with "you're thinner than I thought you'd be after looking at your photo on the lab page. I though you'd be..." and thankfully she didn't finish that sentence. I think I need a new photo for the lab website. It's a funny thing about China - they almost greet you with a comment about your weight. I'm always being told that I'm large or that I've lost weight since someone last saw me. Whatever happened to the good old American greeting of "you look great" even if it's a bald-faced lie? But I'm used to it now and just smile in response. Not a country for the weight conscious or sensitive types.

Nihao from Shanghai

I arrived safely after 27 hours of travel. Boston to Newark, Newark to Beijing, 6 hours in the Beijing airport, and then Beijing to Shanghai. I'm here visiting a lab sort of as a consultant on limb development. They are studying all things bat - echolocation, ecology, behavior, evolution, and one postdoc has recently started looking at limb development. They are excellent hosts, so I have a comfortable place to stay, tons of food, and entertainment around the city. Zhe and I went last night to the big shopping district, Nanjing Road, which is lined with little shops and huge department stores, and everything is lit up in blinding neon. We went into several little specialty food shops with sweets, liquors, chinese medicines, imported chocolates, and a meat market in the back. The meat market was the best. I saw flattened pig face. As in face skinned off of pig. Eyes and ears and mouth and nose. Flattened pancake thin. Awesome.

We went down one of the little side alleys to where there were some food stalls and just picked at a bunch of finger foods for dinner. Waffle-type pastries filled with red bean. Grilled pork wrapped around green onions on a skewer (mmm, food on sticks), sweet sticky rice, and tofu. Yeah, so Zhe says to me "the tofu smells bad, but tastes very good." I think "ok, maybe she doesn't like the smell of tofu." But it's not so bad. I like tofu. Let's have some. Oh noooo. We get a container of fried tofu doused in a red spicey sauce that tastes a lot like buffalo sauce, and she says to me "Smelly tofu." That's putting it politely. I would say rank cow manure-smelling tofu. As in it brought back vivid memories of going to the auction barn with my dad as a kid. I made it through one piece without gagging and then politely said "I think it's a little too strong for my taste." I'm a very adventurous eater. I've had blood sausage, sheep lung, and a lot of things I didn't even know what they were at the time. But this is one thing I just couldn't stomach.

So then we wandered down to the river which seems to separate the main part of Shanghai from the big buildings in the financial district. We got tickets for one of the cruise boats that takes you up the river and back to see the buildings from both sides which is quite lovely. This is the only place I've been where not only are the buildings lit up with neon down the sides, but two of them serve as giant advertising billboards. It was unbelievable the sort of detail these many-storied skyscraper TV screens could project. Aquarium fish in in vivid colors, fluttering cherry blossom petals.

And I held a bat yesterday. Hooray for that rabies vaccine :) This lab has three different species of bat in captivity, and Zhe let me hold one of the littles ones with tiny teeth so it couldn't do much damage if it got away. They're cute little critters...

Only at Carnival...

It was fabulous. We arrived in Santonia at about 7:30 pm after a long day walking all around Santander, and the Carnival parade had just started. I don’t know who won the costume contest, but they were all a lot of fun. Like the Transformers who stopped once in awhile along the parade route and transformed into cars and airplanes. But one of the most fun, for me at least, was Barack and Michelle Obama complete with the Secret Service. It wasn’t just them – it was the fact that later in the night they met up with random other people who were dressed as Al Qaeda, Talibanis, and the Saudis. So many different and fun costumes, many of which wouldn’t go over so well in the States, and many were very driven by American and world politics. I saw more US Army and Navy costumes than you’d see in San Diego on ship leave. But if only the real world could bring opponents to such a fun and slovenly drunken place to sort out their differences…

Early in the evening was full of families and kids running around. Carnival is kind of like Halloween on steroids. There are no age restrictions, everyone’s in costume, and everyone is in group costume. It was amazing. Whole families – mom, dad, and a couple of kids – dressed as lions or ducks or clowns, or priests and nuns. My favorite was the little toddler dressed as a priest sucking on a pacifier on a white chain. So incredibly wrong but so cute. Then as the night wore on and the families disappeared, the younger crowd came out in all sorts of costumes. Mostly men in drag. But not like Brazilian Carnival men in fabulous sequins and feathers-type drag. Men in high-necked dresses with long skirts and their hair in Spanish buns with lots of makeup and rich red lipstick. The gals we met up with, Rocio and her friends who live in Santonia, were all dressed as punk rockers. And they brought costumes for me and Federica. We were “Little Red Riding Hood”. Cute. Very cute.

There were two big stages set up in town with music blasting until 7 or 8 in the morning, and the squares were both packed full at least until we caught the bus back to Santander at 4:30 am. It was good fun, dancing in the streets all night. But we were clearly not the professional party type. No, those were the kids who had packed 2-liter bottles of cocktails to power their alcohol fueled all night frenzy. 4:30 am was late enough for me. I zonked for the entire 30 minute bus ride back, and the 10 minute walk to my apartment was the longest trudge ever known to mankind.

So the next morning, we drove with Marta to visit Comillas. Ok, truth be told, it was afternoon before I dragged out of my apartment. But Comillas was nice and very worth the effort. It’s a village by the ocean that is typical Spanish with windy little streets and old houses. There is an old gothic chapel on a hill that has been converted to a walled-in cemetery. Unfortunately the two main attractions, Gaudi’s house and the religious university that he designed, were both closed for renovations, so we only got to see those from a distance and through scaffolding. But it was a nice visit and better than lying in bed all day. Which is probably what I would have done if not forced into the alternative.

One more full day and then I’m back to Boston. It’s been a great visit both for work and for fun. I haven’t wanted to turn this into a boring lab notebook, but suffice it to say that the main reason I came out here has turned out well. The work was accomplished, and I feel sufficiently trained to go back and do this myself. That is until sometime in the middle of the summer when things might just have to “stop working” so that I have a reason to come back and hang out on the beach, er, I mean slave away in the lab again. I’ve made some really good friends, eaten a lot of great food, had a lot of great drink, and stored away some “reserves” for the imminent trip to China. So stay tuned sometime around March 23rd for that one if you want to follow along some more…

P.S. I added a picture to the post below. This was taken on the subway in Bilbao. The first panel is “don’t hold the door”. The second panel is “don’t enter when the alarm is sounding”. And the third panel clearly reads “don’t sit while conjoined triplets are standing.”

Many animals died in the creation of this blog post...

I have an interesting observation about the old ladies in the north of Spain. I like to call them "The Fur Coat Ladies" or "The Fur Coat Clones". They're all the same, one right after another in a sourpuss brigade of fluff scuttling down the streets all day. And they all have the same expression of general disdain for someone who might otherwise be enjoying life. So I've developed a new game - to try to get them to smile. They all have the same old lady scowl, and if you smile at them their face turns even more into a lemon pucker. But every once in awhile I win when one of them flickers an unconscious smile back.

It's been a great few days, and I've discovered that the world (at least in science) is very small indeed. I've known for a few weeks that a woman from a lab in London was coming to give a seminar and get recruited for a position at a new institute here in Santander. I felt like her name was familiar, but couldn't place her until we got to the airport (me and Marian) to pick her up. Marian was digging through her bag and not paying attention when Federica passed through the doors from baggage claim, and so I saw her first. Yep, I know her. And she didn't see Marian but saw me. And wasn't expecting someone she met once in Wood Hole a year ago to show up out of nowhere in an airport in Spain when she's here for an interview. It was quite a priceless look on her face. So fortunately for me, I have a travel buddy for a few days. She's staying through Sunday evening to see some of the area, so we traveled together today to Bilbao and are going to Santona tomorrow for Carnival. Sinfully glutinous fun.

Bilbao was great but mostly because of the Guggenheim. The building is a Frank Gehry work of abstract steel curvature, and the galleries inside are all off of a main cathedral-vaulted central entrance. There are two major installations. One of Murakami - a Japanese artist who does ridiculously brightly colored anime-style paintings and sculptures and another by Richard Serra - an America "sculptor", of sorts, who creates 12 foot tall steel structures that are meant to sort of bend your perception of space and time. They gave me the feeling of what I would imagine walking inside of a rosebud to feel like - you enter in one place and walk around and round to the center of the sculpture. But sometimes the big steel plates curve inward or outward with respect to each other and psychologically force your body to tilt in that direction even though there is plenty of room to walk perfectly upright. And sometimes the steel echos your footsteps, voice, and giggle so that it sounds like there are duplicates of you wandering between the giant plates. But my favorite was an installation by someone whose name I didn't even catch that was a series of 10 digital light boards about 6 inches wide that reached from floor to ceiling in the central entryway. They ticker-scrolled words up and down and backwards that were essentially the description of an obsessive relationship that goes badly. They're very short sentences "I see you. I breathe you. I tickle you." and then it goes badly "I need you. I follow you." and then worse "I bury my head. I bury your head. I cry." and then there's brief reconnection and a final end. For some reason the way it was presented in the flow of short text was very emotionally dramatic.

So from the Guggenheim we wandered through the city to the old part of Bilbao and into a cafe on the central square after watching the kids wander the streets in their carnival costumes. 6 glasses of wine, two glasses of Pacharan, and 10 pinchos later it was time to catch our bus back to Santander. The last bus was at 11:30. We left the bar at 10:20 and started following the compass in my head that rarely fails me in getting from point A to point B. Except there was an enormous hill between those two points, and the Lonely Planet fails to make their maps topographical. Add to that the fact that alcohol diminishes my sense of distance, and we were in a rough state. So after asking a few very helpful locals, we managed to find the metro and get on a sensible train back around to the bus station with time to spare to pass out on the last bus leaving for the night.

And the food. The pinchos in the bar were delightful and deserve a description. We had a wafer thin pastry cone that was crispy fried and filled with chorizo, mushrooms, and grilled vegetables topped with snowflake-finely grated cheese (asiago, perhaps?). Then rounds of delicately tender beef cooked rare and wrapped around bacon and cheese on grilled leeks on top of a slice of baguette. And finally a soft white fish battered and lightly fried with thin slices of jamon and a single tiny sage leaf on top. All spectacular and unique. And I'm already hungry for them again...

I love the Spanish mullet

It's pervasive and beautiful. In an ironic sort of way. So many young men in Spain have a fabulous mullet that is either all shaggy and distinctively "business in the front, party in the back" or the alternative "business in the front, Bob Marley in the back" dredlocked version. Awesome.

Today was quite a good day. It's been a long week of hard work, so I look forward to the weekends very much. And bonus for today is that it was sunny. Very sunny. Cold and windy, but the first time that I could walk outside and feel bright warm rays on my translucently greenish skin. I think I was starting to grow my own colony of lichen from all of the damp cool air and long hours sitting almost mime-like hunched over the microscope. So I took advantage of the day, after a brief trip to lab, to roam the town a bit. I wandered over to the cathedral coincidentally right as the church bells started to toll to call for 5 o'clock Mass. It was an amazing cacophony as two off the bells swung around and around about their mounting - four chimes per rotation of each iron bell off set from each other in a succession of impressive clanging. As the rotation slowed and the tolling subsided, the peals softened until there was an almost mournful trail of the final soft tones, calling all late comers to scurry up the steep stone steps of the cathedral.

I met Rushi precisely at 5 pm on the steps of the town hall, and he was hardly awake. That's part of why I arranged to spend the day with him - to drag him out into the sun for some much needed fresh air for both of us. The first words out of his mouth were "churros? I'm hungry." Oh yes. So we went to a little cafe that Marian says has been just the same for as long as she can remember. It's one of those places that was first decorated in the 1950s and hasn't changed even the placement of tables ever since. Churros are sticks of fried doough Fried dough wins in any form in my book, and churros are super awesome. They're served with chocolate in a small cup that's almost the consistency of pudding and rich but not very sweet. You dip the churros in the chocolate, and they're perfect. So after churros and chocolate, we wandered over to the waterfront and Rushi wanted coffee. I teased that we were just going to move from churros to coffee to beer to wine to dinner to cocktails, and that's pretty much the progression of the night.

We ended up around the other side of the peninsula in Sardinero which is more of an upscale ocean-front part of Santander and had a few beers in an "Irish Pub" overlooking fishing boats lit up on the ocean. Then we realized we were hungry and ready to move back into the main part of town. We decided to return to the restaurant where I got just a tease of a taste of pinchos last weekend but figured we would take a bus rather than walk in the cold wind. Best. Decision. Ever. That was the most entertaining bus ride of my life. Of course it's valentine's day which is apparently not much of a holiday here amongst the other crowd but is picking up steam with the younger kids. So one stop after we boarded, a hoard of dozens of kids no older than 18 get on the bus, and it's totally like a grade school dance - girls at the back of the bus and boys at the front. Half of the girls were wearing cheap plastic tiaras with pink feathers and were dressed in high heels and short skirts. And then they started to sing. Rushi said it was something about how this is a special day, etc etc. And then the boys all started clapping in rhythm and singing their own song but as more of a lyrical rap type performance. Completely surreal and like some bizzare scene out of "Westside Story". And even though the two groups of guys and gals didn't interact for the whole bus ride, they all got out at the same destination. And presumably proceeded to stand across the room from each other for the rest of the night.

So we ended up at the pinchos place and found our little spot at the end of the bar, ordered 5 pinchos, and devoured those in less than 2 minutes. We stuffed ourselves. I think our server was a little bit appalled since the tradition in spain is to have a couple in one place and then move along to the next destination. But they're so good. It's my ideal food - three perfect bites. One as the new discovery, one bite to appreciate the mix of flavors, and the last bite to part ways and prepare for the next delightful treat. For those who missed the earlier post, pinchos are mostly piles of stuff on bread. Sometimes it's some sort of meat with mushrooms or tuna with anchovies or fried quail egg with spanish ham or egg with potato or potato with octopus, but they're all yummy. And since it's difficult to decide we just kept telling the guy "bring us 5 more that we haven't already had" and ended up with 15 in total. They're cheap which is cool, but our tab still ended up being a mile long with 15 pinchos, 4 beers, and 2 after dinner liquors to make it all settle a little better. Then we moved to a bar in the square that has outside seating and "people watched" all of the groups of made up gals tottering on high heels, the groups of international students who had recently arrived, the drunken men oscillating between threatening to punch each other followed by "I love you man" making up. I'm glad Rushi is only part adopted Spanish and yet still enough Indian to recognize that 2 am is late enough and not try to keep me out until past 5 in the morning again. Especially since tomorrow is supposed to be another beautiful sunny day...

"My room has no strength"

Yep, that's what I said. That's apparently why Carmen looked at me so strangely. When I told the lab folks what happened, they started laughing at me. I looked up all of the words in my handy little phrasebook, but I should have looked up "electricity" instead of "power". Apparently the literal translation for "power" doesn't cover electrical power. Only physical power. Oops. So now I'm looking up spanish words but then looking the same word up in the "spanish-english" section to confirm that the meaning is really what I want to say. Oh well, at least I figured out where the breaker box is which is good. It seems that the burners on my stove are the problem. If I have both going at once, it trips the breaker.

So I am now fully recovered from my second all night out partying with the Spanish. It's the first on this trip but pretty much a redux of my experience in El Escorial in August. A group of us started in a little bar in the market downtown and then moved on to a place for "pinchos" for dinner. Pinchos are a type of tapas. Basically, it's a bunch of stuff on slices of baguette or piles of stuff in little pastry cups. They're totally delish. Absolutely fabulous. And unless you eat enough of them, not. filling. at. all. It was me, Rushi, Irene, and two other gals they know. The girls (me excluded) were all eating super slowly like little birds while Rushi and I hovered around the edge drooling thinking "are you going to eat that?" They ordered three rounds of food (one thing per person per round) and then were ready to move on to the next location. My first thought was "Sweet. These were tasty appetizers, and now we're off to dinner." Nope. We were off to another bar. To be followed by another and then a dance club until they upped the lights and shooed everyone out at 4:30 am. So by the time I got home, famished, at about 5 am I was still awake enough to throw together a sandwich to curb the hunger. I so want to go back to that place with Rushi and/or Marta, belly up to the bar, and just eat my fill of those things. Super yum.

Yeah, so I managed to have my early morning post-bar snack and stay up late (early?) enough to re-hydrate and metabolize some of the alcohol in my blood stream so that Sunday was not so painful. Albeit, I woke up at 11 am and napped again from noon to nearly 2, but it sounds like I was better off than most of the others. Sundays are gloriously lazy here. It's easy to lounge without feeling guilty when there are few other options. Besides watching "Abre Los Ojos" which is an awesome movie. It's the Spanish version (original version) of "Vanilla Sky" directed by Amenebar. He also did "The Others" with Nicole Kidman and (my favorite) "The Sea Inside". If you haven't seen that last one, go rent it. It's a wonderful flick. It's in the same vein as "Talk to Her" and "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" - also great movies.

Let there be light...

I really should have been sound asleep 2 hours ago since there are many many eggs to be dealt with, but I'm ever nocturnal and it's sometimes a challenge to force myself down at night. So one blog entry, and I'm off to dream land.

I've had more semi-bilingual adventures of late. Yesterday was a fun Spanglish lab meeting. We covered a paper that's a big fat whopping review of a bunch of complicated models without a whole lot of consensus, and I give huge props to my Spanish colleagues for the effort to conduct the discussion in English even though it's not a comfortable conversational language for all of them. The result was that the conversation was held more or less twice - once in english with me included and a reiterated and continued discussion in spanish for those who struggled a little through the english. 2 hours, and we only got through the first half of the paper. To be continued monday. Most of the folks at the medical campus speak and understand a good amount of english - it is an academic center after all, but a some of them focus on reading and writing papers and don't have much opportunity to speak. They're the easy ones to pick out because there's a bit of a deer in headlights look when I approach. Like today when Marian asked Mamen to help me with a protocol. Poor thing. Mamen is so sweet and smiley and is always singing or making funny noises and happily bouncing around the lab, but she turned flush red and quivery when she came up to me. She apologized that she'd been avoiding me because she was afraid to try to speak english with me, but she underestimates her abilities, and we communicated quite well. Though she insisted Irene stay nearby to bail her out in case she panicked. I keep telling everyone they should feel good because everyone's english is FAR better than my pathetic Spanish.

And today my lack of Spanish got put to the test again when I had just gotten home, got all comfy, started arranging dinner, and *pop* the power goes out. But only in my room. The hall lights were on, and I could hear TVs in other rooms. So I dug around looking for a fuse box and realized I would have no choice but to go down to the desk and try to explain to Carmen that I have no power. Out comes the phrase book. "Mi habitacion tiene no poder" which I'm sure is not correct grammar, but I looked up all of the individual words and at least figured I'd get my point across. So feeling like John Cleese in the Monty Python sketch, I head down to the desk and say "no poder. tiene no poder" and get the look that the failed gubernatorial candidate, Gary Coleman, was famous for in the ever popular and yet incredibly politically incorrect 80's sitcom "Different Strokes"..."what you talking about, Willis?" So I tried again, and she understood I was trying to say "power" when I struggled to pronounce "luz" for "light". So after asking about lights in the halls and all she goes rattling off something about housekeeping tomorrow, etc, etc, and I quickly start digging for the word "flashlight". At this point she's giving me the look like I'm a crazy lady and gives up trying to understand (though I was actually quite proud we'd gotten that far with my phrasebook and a rudimentary understanding of a few words of spanish and english between the two of us. So she headed up to my room, discovered that I wasn't crazy and it was the breaker that flipped. And now I know that the breaker switches are all in a little box over the door if it ever happens again. Poder restored.

One last point to make again about food. I (pretty easily) convinced Rushi to join me for dinner last night but made him pick the restaurant and order everything. I love this arrangement. Another amazing meal. We started with slices of octopus on thin medallions of potatoes drizzled in olive oil and generously sprinkled with paprika. I never realized octopus could be so good, because it's most often a nearly inedible tire rubber consistency that you either want to spit out or give up chewing and swallow whole. And without much taste. But this was incredible. Apparently it's a specialty in Galicia, the next province over, and they tenderize it by pounding it then freezing it, then boiling it, and then lighly sauteeing it in olive oil. The result is well worth the effort and is still a little firm around the edges but rich and buttery soft in the center and soaks up the richness of the olive oil. Next we had skewers (I love food on sticks). One was mushrooms, peppers, onion, and bacon. The other was chunks of pork (I also love pig) marinated in olive oil, oregano, and enough garlic to expunge the world of vampires. The last dish was one of the best and yet simplest things I've had so far. It was little squids (baby tentacles and mantles) sauteed with caramelized onions and red and green peppers that were cooked down almost to nothing with extra flavorful blackened bits of onion. All of that was swimming in olive oil and seasoned with oregano and a generous but not ruinous amount of salt. Then across the top was a fan of thinly sliced and perfectly golden potatoes. Yum.

Lazy Sunday

The lifestyle here is starting to grow on me. It took some time to accept that nothing is open on Sundays. Pretty much nothing. Almost absolutely nothing. The few exceptions are the cafes that cater to those who don't cook for themselves which is good because people here would otherwise starve on Sunday. I just got back from the lab (also very much empty) and found that the cafes are actually full this evening of men riveted to some sort of football game. That's soccer for you yanks - the Super Bowl is going to come and go without notice in this part of the world.

I had to make an effort to go to the grocery store last night to stock up on groceries so that I'd have something to eat today. Beef stew. I'm excited - my first attempt to cook something real here. It's difficult to cook in a strange country since nothing is quite what you're used to. Like onions - they had sweet onions and green onions (scallions) so I went with the green onions. Now sort of wishing I'd gone for sweet. Or just said screw it all and got a block of yummy dried meat and more cheese.

Yesterday was super fun. Marian and her husband met me and Marta in the morning for a drive out into the countryside. We stopped first in Santilla which is a midieval village that's been preserved and turned into quite a tourist destination. Apparently the narrow cobblestone streets in the summer are thronged with foreigners, and you can see evidence of their past and future presence in the hotels and hostels and pizza and burger bars. But it's delightful in January on a misty day in the 50s. We wandered a few streets with local delectables and had coffee before progressing on to the next destination. Apparently we're going to try to make a return trip on another day because it's close, and it's the village nearest the Altamira Cave.

The second village was also midieval but different from the first in that Santilla is where the wealthier marquis lived, and it has a big old Romanesque cathedral and larger nicer houses whereas Barcena Mayor is up in the mountains and is a more rural agricultural village. The houses are all made of rock with dark wooden terraces, many of which are draped in vines and potted plants. The houses are built in multiple levels with the ground floor serving as housing for livestock. Many people have since converted their ground floors into a garage or shop or workshop, but there was a pony under one house and evidence of livestock under a couple more. The village is a historical site now so even though people still live there and carry on about "normal" agricultural lifestyles, it's in the presence of a lively tourist attraction with bed and breakfasts, restaurants, and giftshops dotted throughout the windy cobblestone streets. It's tastefully preserved, and the benefit of it being a tourist attraction is that the government supports conservation projects that keep these 600+ year old houses intact.

And what blog post would be complete without a description of the meal of the day? We dined at a little restaurant on the river that runs down through the valley along the edge of the village - El Mason Rio Argoza. Another fabulous meal. I only look at the menus to see if there is anything I recognize and memorize the treats that are ordered for me. Otherwise, I leave the selections entirely up to my hosts. Good idea all around. We started with a warm dish of eggs scrambled with wild mushrooms that was perfectly salty. Then there was a dish of sauteed slices of chorizo made from wild boar swimming in scarlet red grease, a plate of thinly sliced ham (jamon) which is a staple of just about every meal, and a platter of assorted "puddings". The puddings were interesting. A Spanish pudding, at least in this area, is a block of something between a mousse and a semi-soft cheese that's made at least partially of egg and comes in several flavors. Our platter had one made with the delightful soft blue cheese that I wrote of earlier, another of fish, a third with mushroom, and the last with crab. They were all wonderful and served with little squares of something similar to melba toast. And we Americans have no appreciation for proper bread compared to the Europeans. The bread here (most of it at least - if it's good) is super hard and crunchy on the outside but light, fluffy, and delicate on the inside. It's inspiring me to crack open my new bread book when I get back and try to master a good artisan loaf.

I'm making myself hungry with this post, so I'm going to be off to finish my stew and settle in to watch a movie before dozing off for the night. I hope everyone is well and enjoyed your weekends. Hasta luego...

Today's secret word is...

"morcilla". Extra special bonus points to whoever knows what that is without using a google search. Of course I won't know if you do, so feel free to cheat away...

It's one of those things that most people would eat and find yummy so long as they don't know what it is beforehand. There is a student in the lab, Rushi, with whom I went to dinner last weekend and again tonight (along with Marta). Marta is Spanish. Rushi is Indian. I have a lot of respect for Rushi. He's been here for 3 years and spoke not a word of Spanish before moving here. The cook in the university cafeteria is quite fond of him, and I think a part of that is because they struggled to understand each other for a long while. I see it in the way the cook makes fun of me as well. Anyway, Rushi loves "morcilla". I've had it before (my birthday two years ago in China) but not like this. This was super yum. Fried with onions. But my tummy hurts a little now. Too much fat. We started with dried meat of some sort then the morcilla with onions and a plate of pan friend green peppers followed with a firm cross between a cheesecake and a cheese flan for dessert. I'm considering bulimia as a healthy option for my time in Spain. Just kidding...

My other not-so-fun news is that the other day I left work a bit early to wander the city and ended up being followed by some random dude. He gave me an awkward sideways glance at a street corner and then I felt like he was following me. I stick out as an American here, and he spoke english so it may be that he just wanted to chat. But it was weird. So I cut up a side street and he turned as well. I turned right down another busy shopping street, and he turned also. I slowed to look at some housewares, and he paused to make a phone call. So then I dipped into the recessed entry of a shoe store where there were some other folks thinking that if I was just being paranoid I'd give him a chance to move on, but he came in to join me. AND THEN HE TOUCHED MY ARM. He wanted to know if I spoke english, where I was from, if I was alone, if I wanted to join him for a drink. I said "no", and he said "why not." In my head I screamed "uh, dude, because you're freaking creepy, you *followed me*, AND YOU TOUCHED ME!" But in reality I said "because I generally don't hang out with people I don't know". I'm fairly trusting and have struck up conversations with some pretty random people in relatively safe and comfortable circumstances. I spent a week on a motorbike with a guy in Cambodia that I'd just met two days before for goodness sake. So it was comforting to me to know that those little hairs on the back of my neck do in fact work. But no worries. The streets here are full of people, and Santander is a very safe town.

Okay, time for some TUMS and bedtime. I'm meeting Marian and Marta tomorrow morning to make up for last weekend's excursion that got canceled. I love when Marian says "excursion". It's such a quaint choice of words to begin with, and she has a delightful Spanish accent. so it sounds like there are all sorts of extra consonants in there. She developed a cold last weekend and decided the miserable cold wet weather was not a good idea, but we're on for the little village tomorrow. I'm looking forward to some history and older architecture. Much of Santander burned to the ground in the 1940s, so it's not a great place to see historic Spain...

The rain in Spain...

...does not fall mainly on the plains. And whoever said that was smoking crack. The rain in Spain falls mainly in Santander. It's apparently been raining here pretty much non-stop since September. I've landed myself in the Spanish equivalent of Seattle. So at least I can say this is quickly feeling like home. And it's lushly green and beautiful - if you can stand to be out long enough to enjoy it.

I got up this morning, got all ready for work, made coffee with my newly borrowed italian coffee pot that took some admirable gesturing, a poor attempt at my spanish, and a hail mary call to Isa to acquire from Carmen at the front desk, and was about to walk out the door when the sky exploded. That's the best I can describe the apocalyptic sound and downpour that came from the heavens. Thunder and lightening and heavy rain that I later found out also produced an inch of pea-sized hail. Folks here promise this is unusual weather for Santander, and I'm waiting for this oddity to go away. The 10 minute walk to work is all uphill which is challenging on an inch of loose ice with rivers of melt-off running down the sidewalk. It's unfortunate that the safest place to walk without slipping was in the rivers of runoff because my shoes were not so water proof. So dear, sweet Marian sat me down at a heater while one of the students from another lab ran off to fetch me a pair of Crocs from the medical students' changing room. I was impressed that he got my size right and clomped around the rest of the day in pale blue plastic slippers. But I am now the proud owner of a pair of spanish galoshes. Botas de agua - or at least that's what I'm calling them since they're my new water boots. The rest of me was quite dry with my raincoat and umbrella though the tiny cheap umbrella I brought along kept turning inside out in the gale force wind and threatened to turn me into Mary Poppins...

I also made impressive shopping trip #2 to the supermercado and managed to find everything on my list while resisting the urge to look like a crazy lady roaming up and down the aisles looking at all of the alien food items. Canned anchovies and tuna seem to be *the thing* here, so those might be on my lab list in addition to the turron that I'll be lynched if I forget. And they store milk *and* eggs at room temperature on shelves here. In celebration of my purchases, I rewarded myself with a bottle of grapefruit juice, though in hindsight I seem to have jumped the gun on that one. Turns out I bought "papel higienico" (toilet paper) instead of "toalles de papel" (paper towels) and now my dishes smell like flowers. Oops. In my defense, it's cheap toilet paper that looks like paper towel and was stacked two rolls each three across, so I thought it was three small rolls of paper towels. At least I didn't make the mistake the other way around.

I have also learned that Spanish coffee induces Parkinson's disease. So while I can usually handle an American cup o' jo and do my surgeries, not so much here. And since I'm here for my steady hands, no coffee for me until the weekends. Too bad cause the Spanish coffee and jetlag had just convinced me to give up my four month abstinence, and I may be going through the DTs all over again...

If God didn't want us to eat animals, why did he make them so tasty?

I just got back from the first of what I anticipate to be many fabulous dinners. I met up this evening with one of the graduate students in Marian's lab, his girlfriend, and her cousin who are visiting from Madrid. They're fun folks. We went to a really wonderful restaurant and gorged ourselves on an amazing spread starting with a mixed green salad with a dressing that had so much garlic that I'm glad I have no one to room with, though it was well balanced with the spicy greens and sharp vinegarette. Followed by a plate of meats so impressive that I had to take a picture - 5 cured tastinesses. Then cheese croquettes which are essentially cream and flour cooked down to a paste mixed with cheese and chilled then rolled into little balls that are rolled in finely crushed bread crumbs and lightly fried until they're gooey in the center. Then a dish of shrimp sauteed in garlic, butter, and white wine. Followed by baked potatoes stuffed with ground beef and drizzled in some sort of bechamel sauce with paprika. And the final course was a cheese plate with 7 different cheeses, many of which are special to this region. One was a delightful soft cows milk cheese that was accompanied with quince paste. I think we had the exact thing in madrid with the addition of walnuts. Another cheese was a very stinky cross between a brie and a bleu cheese Everything was so simple and yet so incredibly yummmm because of the quality. Of course this was matched with two pitchers of sangria that tasted of the faintest addition of vanilla or banana and finished off with a yummy sweet cream liqueur that was sort of similar to Bailey's but lighter and with a more delicate flavor.

So I now understand when my dad would get mad at me for saying that his cows were fat. "They're not fat, they're FULL!" he'd say. And I'd say "well they look fat to me." Right now I look pretty fat to me, and while I'm definitely just full to the brim, if I keep eating like this I will most definitely be fat before long.

But I'm walking a lot to earn it for right now at least. Marta, an MD who is doing research in the department, called last night to warn me about the high winds and bad weather and then asked if I wanted to get out today with her if the weather was nicer. It was clear from the damage to potted plants and lamp posts that the wind last night was incredible. Today it was chilly and a little windy but not bad enough to keep us in, so we went for a tour of the town. It's not a very big city, but it's long and narrow. We walked the entire length of the city to the ocean and back in about 6 hours - stopping for wine, coffee, and snacks along the way. Collectively we ran into 5 people we knew which gives me the impression that this is a very small town indeed. Two were people she knew, two were professors from the department that I'd met, another was a young student raising money for the UN refugee fund who I met a counple of nights ago. He just wanted to practice his English because I needed to have a european bank account to give him money anyway. Nice...

Speaking of money, my new favorite spanish word is "rebajas" which means "sale". Every store window has it spelled out in big letters. The slumping economy has hit spain BIG TIME. When we were here in August the dollar was $1.57 per euro, and now it's down to $1.29. Everything is up to 70% off in the stores. You know what that means, Jenna - SHOES. Lots of shoes. Lots of pretty boots. But it makes me feel a little bit guilty even though I have nothing to do with it personally. The whole world's economy is taking a *huge* hit right now, and a lot of it is tied up in the US financial system. It's easy to sit at home and think that our troubles are limited to the US, but this is an enormous crisis (and they quite bluntly call it a "crisis" here) that is hitting the global economy. And it probably affects places like this that don't have as big an economy to begin with versus us at home. So in exchange, I'm going to see what I can do to help out a little bit in the retail sector...

My other big news is that I'm making friends left and right here. Folks are super friendly. The woman who runs the desk at the apartments in the evening, Carmen, speaks very little english (about as much as I do spanish) but she tries whenever I come through. She looks sort of like the Spanish equivalent of Darren's aunt Dawn which will only make sense to the few of you who have met her. Very short hair and sort of no-nonsense looking. She's been asking about my spanish, and I've been trying desperately to answer. She says I'm only allowed to speak in spanish and my friends here shouldn't speak english with me. I don't think she realizes how isolating that would be. I met another young gal, Isa, who is living on my floor, and she speaks a little more english. We went down the elevator together speaking english, and Carmen chastised her saying she was only supposed to speak spanish with me. So now we have an agreement. If Carmen will help me learn spanish, I will teach her some more English. I feel like I have a lot of people looking out for me here, and it's quickly turned into a lot of fun.

Must turn in for now. I got the best note when I came in at 1 am tonight. Marian is calling at 11 am tomorrow. I was afraid it would be a lot earlier. She and I are taking a drive out into the countryside to see a small village in a valley. It should be breathtakingly picturesque. I will be sure to have my camera and will try to post pictures!

Welcome to my little Spanish apartment...

Oops, just realized I sent my blog announcement as a "reply to all" from my email last year when I left for China. I will be returning to China again, but that trip is scheduled for the end of March. For those of you who did not know, I will be spending the next 5 weeks working in Santander, Spain at the University of Cantabria. There is a woman here who is a fabulous embryologist, and she and I are working together on a project that will require me to do very delicate surgeries on chick embryos. Surgeries I have never attempted. Surgeries at which she is an expert. Surgeries at which I am hoping my best not to eff up :)

So after being up until 4 am the night before my flight finishing the last bits of things in lab that couldn't wait until I got back, I overcame the stark denial that I was actually temporarily moving to Spain and boarded an overnight flight to Madrid hoping to take a Tylenol PM and zonk out for the 6 hour transit. The flight attendants had other plans. Every time they came down the aisles with meals or beverages, up went the cabin lights at full candle power. So while I did have a whole row of seats to myself on a mostly empty plane (a whole row of two - don't ask why I didn't move to the center of the plane where I could have slept in more than an egg shell of space), it was less than restful.

My first lesson about spain in the winter - even though it's a lower latitude than Boston, it gets light here *way* later. I arrived in Madrid and had to go through passport control before proceeding on to the connecting flight to santander. It was pitch black outside so without checking the clock I thought perhaps it was only 6:30 am and I had loads of time to mosey on toward my 8:50 departure. The first clock I saw said 8:05! And Marian, the woman with whom I'll be working, gets into lab by shortly after 8 am every morning. I am solar powered. I don't get up easily if the sun is not up first. But somehow I will be managing to drag my corpse out of bed and into lab before the sun rises. So much for my late nights out discothequing with the Spaniards.

So I am checked into my little studio apartment in downtown Santander with a private bath and a little kitchenette. I have an under-the-counter fridge and two cook tops that should suffice to feed myself so that I don't have to depend on my abysmal (read: almost non-existent) spanish. I have already made one shopping trip to supplement the generous rations that Marian presented upon arrival, and I am in the midst of preparing my first meal in my little Spanish apartment as I type: some sort of pre-marinated pork chop with browned potatoes and a spinach salad with oil and vinegar. I'm not going to be able to do anything fancy like pot roast and cheesecake while I'm here, but I can at least take care of myself which feels liberating. And there are a ton of little specialty "alimentacion" shops in this area full of fancy meats and cheeses and jars of interesting delectables. I don't think I'm going to have a hard time eating my way through the next few weeks.

Other than that, my sweet little apartment seems to have walls made of paper. The outside noise isn't so bad, but I definitely have neighbors above and on either side, because I think I can hear them breathing. And I can hear everything else. TV, cell phone ring, slippered feet sliding across the floor above... But the nice thing about paper thin walls is that I can also hear the organ of the church next door at the evening mass. We'll just have to see how early that starts and how charming it continues to be. But for right now it's quite delightful.

I'm going to feed my addled brain and try to turn in soon so that I'm on the way toward getting circadian-adjusted. I'm going to try to update this from time to time with my misadventures of trying to survive as a non-spanish speaker living in Spain. At least Darren gave me hours and hours and hours of spanish lessons on CD before I left, so I can spend some of my spare time in the room and perhaps while I'm dissecting listening to spanish lessons so that perhaps by the time I leave in 5 weeks I can say that I speak a little spanish. At least more than the dirty words I learned from the Mexican kids in the back of the bus in grade school...

Hasta luego...

Homeward bound...

I'm packing and figured I'd stop real quick to let you know I'm headed home tonight. It's been a bit rocky the last few days. I flew from Urumqi to Beijing on Wednesday and started to feel a burning and rumbling in my digestive tract that turned into a pretty nasty bout of food poisoning. Fever of 102.5, severe headache, intestinal distress. It was no fun. But that's exactly why I travel with antibiotics, so I was able to get some crackers, a sports drink, take Cipro, and ride it out. I also have to say that I have the best doctor in the world. I emailed him to let him know I was sick and see if he thought it was bad enough to call a doctor here. At least it's Beijing, so I could have seen a trustworthy doctor, but my Doc in Boston said that I was doing everything I could and that I should feel fine in 1-2 days. He even knew that my upset stomach was because of the potassium in the sport drink, and sure enough, when I diluted it by half in water, the nausea went away. By the time I woke up yesterday the fever had broken, and I was a little tired but back to normal. I stayed in to rest which is fine since I've seen enough of Beijing on previous trips. I'm sure it was something I ate. I'm not as careful as maybe I should be, but you can be super super careful and still end up sick. I ate at a dinner theater buffet Tuesday night and had a bit of street food over the last few days, so it could have been any of that. My fellow travelers in Kashgar didn't get sick though, so I don't think it was that round of street food. Perhaps the milk tea for breakfast in Urumqi. Oh well, one can never really tell...

Anyway, I'm going to finish packing and perhaps walk around the zoo for an hour or so before I have to leave for the airport. I hope you're all well, and I'm looking forward to seeing and talking to folks when I get home. I've missed everyone. Best wishes...