Well I've now been in China for a little over a year and I suppose I should give you guys a brief review of some of the special things that have happened in my time here.

Grab a coffee and a little bit of free time, this may take a couple minutes.

By the way, I got some suggestions that my blog was a bit of a strain on the eye's so I have decided to brighten things up a little. I hope you like green.

So I guess I'll start with Febuary 2003.
I arrived in the city of Yantai, about a year ago today. Fresh of the bus and pretty nervous. I'll just tell a simple tale of culture shock for your amusement.

My first visit to an internet bar in China is quite a highlight for me. Reason being, it sums up a very important change that I, along with many westerners must go through to survive here in China. So, I'm Writing an email to some friends and family and about ten minutes in, a special feeling graced the lower part of my stomach. Reminiscant, if you will, of the feeling of a toilet flushing inside your lower intestine. Thats right folks! My first taste of the travellers trots. So I bust downstairs and look pleadingly at the clerk behind the counter, motion my discomfort to her and sort of dance around a bit. It took her a couple of seconds to realize what the hell I was trying to say but she caught on quick and lead me to the bathroom.
"Ahhh the bathroom, sweet relief, oh huh... the bathroom, oh goody", I said to myself, I've just been granted the special privlage to use the cleanest bathroom in the world. And I mean the with no sarcasm intended. To top it all off, It was my first time to use a squater. So lets take a look at the situation. Pat's got the trots, he's in a hygenically challenged bathroom in a smoky internet bar, and it's his first time to use a squater(major balancing problem). Using my fingernails against the walls to gain support I felt I could manage okay. "Well that wasn't so bad", I thought to myself looking around the small room for some T.P. (toiletpaper). "Oh shit!" (Well I learned this leason quickly, don't leave home without it.) Sifting through my wallet I come accros the only peice of paper that wasn't money I could find and took a look. It was the bank receipt from the machine at the beijing airport. With a shrug of my shoulders I continued on having no other choice. As you can probably imagine I was walking a little bit bow legged for the rest of the day......  
  
Thats about all that happened in febuary! March,
AMERICA GOES TO WAR WITH IRAQ, or was that in Febuary. I don't remember.
SARS STARTS TO BECOME A SLIGHT PROBLEM.
I start to gain some confidence in the classroom and starting to make some really good friends. (Reta, Ivan, Ken) to mention just a few. Life really just putters along, Ryan, Chris and I start collecting D.V.D's getting comfortable.

April-May. In april I met a really cool dude who reminded me quite a bit of Jae's Dad. He was quite the hippy in the sixties and went on to become a phscologist and it seemed he had a pretty cool head whenever we encountered some problems. His name was Randy. A.K.A. Yoda, or Buddha. or "the dude" from the movie "the big lebowski" Randy and I had some excellent conversations and became pretty close friends. I learned as much from him as I could and am very happy to have got the chance to know him.

This next story is about the dignity of being human or something like that... Enjoy....May would be the month of my birthday. The 25th of May to be exact and that day was like no other. The party started around 7:30 it seemed like everyone would show. Most importanly, Thomas. The crazy american who made it his personal vendetta to get me blistered on "Baijiu" for my birthday. Baijiu is 50% white alchohol made from rice. It smells like vomit and tastes worse. So as the night went on many different people wanted to do shots of baijiu with me and as it was my birthday I was in no mood to decline. 10:00 comes  "whoaoaaoo! I ssllould ge gooine ge m camer pu i m bag" .......Black!