i bought a bike!

i am now the proud owner of a beautiful new (bright!) red cannondale f6. my plan had been to go with the much uglier, much less conspicuous, white and blue one, but the bike shop didn't have that one, and i figured i need all the help i can get to be noticed around here.

so now i'm in kunming for a few weeks until i leave first for jinghong in far sw china, and then cross into laos. in a rather ambitious fit of inspiration this afternoon (i'm pretty sure i was biking downhill), i've decided to start the bike trip from here. expect my lovely google map to reflect that change in the next few days if it still feels like a good idea tomorrow and the day after. this does mean i'll have to leave kunming a bit earlier than planned since i'm still only on a 30 day visa. oh, i've also added a little icon to the google map that i plan to move as i move, if you feel a burning desire to know where exactly in the world i am, right now.

my short few days in yangshuo were wonderful. i spent the time exploring the countryside on bike and foot. yangshuo is definitely the most naturally beautiful place i've been in china, and maybe one of the more beautiful i've visited in the world. hopefully some photos will make their way up here some day.

and that's it! i'm staying in a great apartment just outside of kunming, started chinese lessons today, and will be biking up every hill i can find in the next few weeks! i hope you are all well - i'll be sure to be back soon with exciting biking stories/puns. take care.

a year and a day in hong kong.

whoops, another month gone.  i'm still in hong kong, but will be leaving a week from tomorrow.  the last month has been really great, although i've been busier than i ever was during the actual grant period.  i couldn't afford the full yoga teacher training (3,500 US wasn't really in my budget...) but i have been doing the morning practices, which means i've been doing yoga 7-9am monday through saturday.  65-70% of you won't believe that i'm actually doing this, but it's been really wonderful and made me even consider the possibility that i'm a morning person.  who knew?

when i'm not pushing the snooze button, i've been teaching about 20-30 hours per week with kaplan.  it's been pretty demanding, but surprisingly enjoyable.  i've learned a lot in the last year about teaching, and am finally reaching a point where i can have fun with the classes, as i feel like i've started to develop my own style of teaching.  

i'm currently living in sheung wan on hong kong island with a friend of mine named julian.  i left my apartment in mong kok this afternoon, which was much sadder than i anticipated.  i've been surprised at how nostalgic i've started to get as i'm faced with my imminent departure.  leaving has led me to realize just how much i've taken away from this year.  

about ten days from now i'll be in kunming and i'll remain there for about three weeks.  during that time i'll start biking up every hill i can find, continue to do yoga (i've been put in touch with some local teachers) and maybe learn some chinese or something.  grad school has become a very real and very exciting possibility in about the last five days, so studying for the gre has been added to my to do list as well.  

that's about it for now.  many of you will have heard this song, but it feels relevant right now.  

sort of a plan.

things are finally starting to fall into place. i just purchased my ticket home this morning, which will take me from ho chi minh, vietnam to hong kong on november 20th, and from hong kong to minneapolis on november 24th. now, all i have to do is figure out what happens between today and november 20th. this is what i've come up with so far (subject to change):

follow along with this map (you can zoom in and out and move it around)

the fulbright officially ends on july 3rd, when the other english teaching assistants fly back to the united states. i have to forfeit my fulbright funded return ticket as my *brilliant* plan to change my return flight date was foiled by northwest and their rules. i'm currently planning on staying in hong kong for the next six weeks, so that i can take part in a month long anusara yoga teacher training course hosted by my yoga studio. i'm also hoping to pick up some teaching hours, and continue (or rather, restart) studying mandarin.

on or before august 12th, i'll head into mainland china, traveling overland through yangshuo (a place i've meant to get to for months) to kunming, the largest city in the southwest province of yunnan. kunming is an important spot, because it is here that i'll be buying the bike that will take me to ho chi minh. i'll remain in kunming until my china visa runs out (30 days) and then head south via xishuangbana into laos. this will put me in laos right around september 12th. at that point, since it will still be a thousand degrees, i'll probably hide in the foothills of northern laos until it cools down, and then make my way south to the largish city of louang phrabang.

this is hopefully where the real bike trip i'm planning will begin. over the next seven or so weeks, i'll work my way south to vientiane (the capital of laos) and then follow the mekong river along the border of thailand and laos until i hit cambodia. i'll then cross into cambodia, making my way to phnom penh. i'll then continue south to kampot, and then work my way east through the mekong river delta to ho chi minh. then, i'll sell my bike and come home.

i've stuck with this idea longer than most, so i'm feeling pretty confident that it's the real deal. when i was home visiting family and friends, i picked up most of the gear i'll need for the trip, so that all i really need to purchase in kunming is the bike itself.

if anyone will be in any of these places, or could be coerced into being in any of these places, do let me know. i'll probably need a piggy back ride around mile 800 or so.

jet lag.

i've tried writing this post quite a few times in the past few months, and as time went on it got harder and harder to create something that adequately expressed what inevitably kept becoming a larger experience.  so instead, i'm not going to really talk about the last few months at all.  the difficulty i have in maintaining this blog has made me realize that blogging probably isn't for me, but since i'd hate to devastate my three loyal readers (actually, google reader tells me i have five subscribers, i'm touched), i'm going to try to push through anyway.

i returned to hong kong four hours ago (at 5:15 am, after a ten hour layover in vancouver), and have decided to use jet lag to my advantage and maybe write something that my sleepy stupor will allow me to post without over thinking.  being back in the us was wonderful and exhausting.  i split my time between the west coast (vancouver, seattle and portland) and minneapolis, and saw a lot of great friends and family.  the ten months i lived in hong kong were, i think, the longest period of time i have spent outside of the us in a single stretch.  after my whirlwind trip back to the us, it's strange to be sitting back in my bed with only the recent water damage on my ceiling courtesy of hong kong's recent torrential rains to remind me of my absence.

so, i'm back, probably for about five months.  the fulbright officially ends on july 3rd, and then i have to start making choices for myself.  it seems i've finally reached the end of the live-your-life-in-handy-segments-so-you-don't-have-to-make-important-life-decisions phase.  i'm not sure why i'm calling it a phase, though, since that phase has been more or less the entirety of my life.  i feel ok about that, though.  i won't share any of my 'definite/certain/fresh' plans for the next few months quite yet, since, let's be honest, they'll be different tomorrow, but i do know that i'll be staying in china and se asia until thanksgiving, hopefully studying chinese, and (maybe?) studying for the gre.

the point of this post is that i'm working through a lot right now, and maybe if i figure some of 'it' out i'll share my realizations here.  i did smile as i stepped off the plane this morning, even as i was slapped?kneed?buffeted? in the face by 120% humidity and 90 degree weather at 5:15 in the morning.  i guess that probably means i'm happy to be back.  and with a little luck, hopefully it will be less than two months until i try to do this whole writing thing again.

back in chengdu.

Hi, so this is Ben's friend Kyle, continuing in the theme of not-Ben posting to Ben's blog. Ben is back in Chengdu, and safe there, but a strange thing happened when he tried to post about his experience of the protests in Lhasa: Blogger shut down and wouldn't let him post anything at all. Then, he tried to send the post to me through four different email accounts, and each time the account would freeze when he tried to send it. Finally, he was able to send it through facebook, which turns out to have a valid use after all. Crazy as it sounds, Ben's account of events is being censored by the Chinese government, so I'm posting it here for him. On that note, here it is:

hi everyone, thank you all for your messages and emails. i returned to chengdu a few hours ago after a 48 hour train ride from lhasa. i originally had planned on keeping this post short, but i've decided that for the sake of dispersing information, i'm going to put what i saw and did so everyone knows what's going on. it's long, so get ready.

i arrived in lhasa on march 13th by plane and spent the first day walking around the jokhang temple, the spiritual center of tibet. i circumambulated the temple on the barkhor circuit with thousands of other pilgrims, watching hundreds prostrating themselves outside. the situation was generally quite normal in the city, although i had been informed that i would not be able to visit most of the monasteries surrounding lhasa (drepung, sera, ganden) as there had been protests by local monks.

the morning of the 14th, i woke early (thanks 3700m) and visited the potala palace, again joining thousands of pilgrims to wander through one of the more beautiful and emotionally overpowering buildings i have ever visited. early that afternoon i went out to the train station to buy my ticket home for march 22nd. on the way back my taxi got a little lost, and dropped me off about ten minutes east of my hostel.

walking down the main road to my hostel, i encountered a huge crowd of people yelling and throwing rocks. to avoid the crowd, i moved south, cutting through the barkhor alleys to try to return to my hostel. the barkhor square was even worse, as tibetans were destroying chinese businesses, and throwing all chinese owned merchandise onto huge fires in the alleys. i cut through the crowd towards my hostel, watching people destroy building after building. after meeting an english speaking thai woman south of the jokhang temple, we pulled a young chinese police woman (19 years old, still in police academy) away from a group of tibetans that were beating her, and ran down an alley. we hid under some burlap sacks for a while, before the door across the alley opened, and we took refuge with a tibetan family.

after providing impromptu first aid to the badly injured chinese police woman, the two women left to go to the hospital, and i spent the night with the tibetan family. by the evening of the 14th, tanks were driving through the city, and i could hear the sound of gun shots and the explosion of tear gas canisters. i tried to return to my hostel a few times, but as i approached the chinese police surrounding the tibetan quarter, they only waved their guns and yelled in chinese to step back.

on march 15th, i woke early again. around 10am, two other americans (one of whom was james miles, the only foreign press correspondent in tibet) miraculously took refuge with the same tibetan family as they dodged the tanks rolling through barkhor square. he was with another young woman who had been in tibet for a while and spoke very good tibetan. the three of us left the tibetan family around 11 (they were so wonderful, their son who lives in la called my dad in minneapolis), and walked through the alleys around barkhor square. the alleys were filled with the remains of chinese businesses, and the fires still raged. a few tibetan men egged on the riot police, banging on pans and screaming for a free tibet.

we proceeded to james' hotel which was located east of the barkhor, still about 15 minutes walk from my hostel. as the protests had started in this area, the whole area was blocked off by riot police, and we couldn't move. for the rest of the 15th, we stayed in the hotel, as we frequently heard gun shots and tear gas burned our eyes. we could see groups of tibetans in the alleys throwing rocks at riot police, as the police shot off warning shots above the tibetans' heads.

that evening, the police started conducting house to house searches, entering our hotel from the roof. we were told that we couldn't leave, as anyone found on the streets would either be arrested or shot. we saw groups of tibetans being escorted by chinese police throughout the day and evening. when i left on the 18th, estimates (not supported) were that thousands of tibetans had been imprisoned in chinese jails.

from the 15th to the 17th we stayed in the hotel, under a form of house arrest, as leaving the hotel was too dangerous. the 15th and 16th were very noisy, as we heard loud explosions and gun shots intermittently. on the 17th, we were informed that tibetans could move with identity cards, and foreigners could move with passports. i left the hotel, trying to return to my hostel (i hadn't had my bag now for 72 hours) but the police would not let me leave the tibetan quarter. the police were all mostly younger than me, and some even smiled as i approached. disturbing.

on the 16th, my tour agency had been trying to contact me, but as i couldn't move, and wasn't anxious to leave, i hadn't encouraged them to come get me. on the 17th, when i couldn't get to my hostel, i asked if they could somehow get my bag. instead of getting my bag, they came to get me. four tibetans showed up in an suv to pick me up, and since they had possession of my tibetan permit, i had no choice but to go with them.

i never felt that i was in danger, as i had nothing to do with the conflict. the chinese government had required the removal of all foreigners because they were scared of the photos and videos the foreigners could (and did) collect. the chinese media has blamed this on the dalai lama. the dalai lama has nothing to do with it, and has released international statements asking for a peaceful resolution. this was a large group of tibetans (both students and otherwise) upset with the chinese because of their violent forced occupation.

the chinese news i watched on the 16th blamed the riots on the 'dalai group,' which, as far i know, does not exist. or if it does, it's not supported directly by the dalai lama. the news reported that the group of rioters was small and that by the 16th the situation had returned to normal. it showed tibetans delivering presents to the chinese to thank them for bringing safety. the same broadcast was repeated over and over again, as if hearing it twenty times would somehow make it true. in the remainder of mainland china, the tibetans are depicted (and it's largely believed to be true) as ungrateful terrorists. the protests of the last week are considered to be the biggest uprising in tibet since 1959.

i’m no longer aware of the exact situation in tibet. i left the morning of the 18th, a few hours after an ultimatum was given by the chinese to stop all rioting. i have no idea whether the ultimatum was met. there was still unrest between tibetans and muslims when i left, as the mosque (or the area around it) near the hotel i was stuck at was apparently (again not supported) lit on fire.

i'm going to keep my emotional response out of this for now, as i'm still working through what all of this means. i wanted to make sure everyone understood the situation as i saw it. i've tried to keep it as objective as possible. if anyone has any further questions, please contact me. i hope you are all well.

Benjamin is safe

This is Benjamin's dad. I've been in contact with Benjamin and he is safely in a hotel waiting out the protests. As soon as he gets internet access, he'll post an update here and answer his emails.

Scott Jenson

sino the times...

the last few weeks have been very busy.  emilio has been back in town for the past two weeks, which has been great.  a friend from kunming was also in town this week, so we had an unusually full house.

it's always great to have guests, because it brings back the excitement of the first few months in a new place.  i still feel very mixed about hong kong (and have resigned myself to feeling this way for the next four months), but have loved exploring new restaurants, hiking trails and other more touristy spots with a new group.

i've recently gotten back into climbing which has also been really great.  climbing gyms are very strange here, and very difficult to find.  there are only a few bouldering gyms, and most of them are hidden in the upper floors of scary warehouses.  luckily, though, i managed to meet a banker (surprise) named nick at one of them who happens to be developing some new outdoor sport routes in kowloon.  since meeting a few weeks ago, i've climbed with him a few times.  it's pretty surreal to finish a climb and turn around to find hong kong at your feet.  the quality of the climbs is surprisingly good as well.

we stayed at the venetian in macau last weekend on a 'spring break 08 woooo' package, which was certainly interesting.  macau hotels are weird.  especially when they're modeled after a rich couple's honeymoon in venice.

i'm flying to chengdu tomorrow to visit a friend from senegal, and then heading to tibet for just under two weeks on the 13th.  not quite sure of the itinerary yet, but i'm starting to get very excited.  

that's all i have to report for now.  i hope everyone has a lovely march, and i'll be sure to post photos when i return!

why i want to marry daniel rossen.