Updates from Hangzhou part 1: I feel like Alice in Wonderland

9.22.08

I am strangely calm as I head off to what may be the most unpredictable adventure since forever. Sure, I have some qualms about taking what could be a sketchy flight later on today, but am feeling pretty steady. After catching up on sleep like crazy and sitting through a few crappy movies, it feels incredibly bizarre as I wait in transit at the Incheon airport in Korean. It’s an airport that I am very familiar with; but it is the familiarity that heightens the feeling.
A part of me wants to go through immigration and come home, and another part of me misses America like crazy and wouldn’t want anything else but to get on the next flight back – but I keep on moving, driven by a deep sense of purpose that beats like a steady drum. This beat won’t stop until it’s done.
I’ve missed Asia, I realized. I’ve missed the people, the food, the quiet serenity intermingled with a loudness that is almost offensive, great passions blazing beneath a veneer of politeness and an organized chaos that is an essence…of me.
The hardest part of the trip is yet to come – traveling within China at crazy hours – so I await and prepare myself with tremulous anticipation.
The adventure is just beginning, after all.



9.23.08 3.20.am

I suppose it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference now, but I realize that I have stepped onto Chinese soil without 1.Bringing a little book of useful Chinese words and 2.Without doing much research on what the city is like, how much things cost, and with no maps whatsoever. What arrogance or retardation! Not only did I overestimate my abilities of survival, I have made the classic American blunder of assuming that everyone speaks English. There have been several times in the last three hours where I was convinced that it would make absolutely no difference whether I were asking for directions in English or in Korean, or better yet, telling a great story about unicorns grazing in a field over yonder. Mentally kicking myself over and over again would not make much difference besides to bruise my already considerably shrunken ego so I have stopped telling myself I am an idiot, but now my humor has kicked in and I am having a grand ole time laughing at me.
I won’t go into all the details of the night – or rather, early morning – but let’s say that it involved a lot of walking and pantomiming with my 60 something pound suitcase and my almost as heavy backpack in 86 degree (at 1am!) and 100% humidity weather.
And at the end of it all, I am not at all sure if this is even the hotel that I was supposed to stay at for the night. Two young Chinese girls who’ve had a teensy bit to drink guided me here after getting some directions from a taxi driver, and the sign on the gate is all in Chinese. Well, we will find out how well the girls did tomorrow.