Tails of Tubby the Mouse

On second thought, pictures are huge. So I’m not going to put them up here. Find me when I get back…

After a change of plans (no longer going to Urumqi, for various reasons), I am now in Beijing for a few days. In a hotel that has internet access (until we leave here on Wednesday)!

The last week or so has been wild. Absolutely wild. Unfortunately, the most wild parts are not things to write about online right now, which anybody who actually reads this will find out about later, since clearly after dropping a hint like this, I will have to tell the story behind it. But I’ll just say that we nearly had to come home a week early, and nearly got all our specimens taken away.

We were in the Qinghai province for about a week. Most of it was taken up my driving across the Tibetan plateau, although sadly never in Tibet itself. But that was pretty amazing. Many a yak and many a camel were seen grazing along the road, as well as goats and sheep, which are cute but slightly less exciting.

We also spent a few days in Xining, the capital of the province. Interesting city. There is a huge Muslim population in Qinghai, which was quite different from much of the rest of the country that we’ve seen. I experimented with fruits at street markets, with mostly wild success.

Beijing is a big difference after spending most of this trip driving around rural China. Parts of it (read: toilets, hot water, anybody that knows even two words in English) are a welcome change, parts of it (continuously gray sky, other tourists getting in the way of our tourism, destroying lungs by breathing the air) are less welcome. But we did some touristy activities today, which was a nice change from just driving around and looking at plants.

I also believe I am the only bio thesis student who has:  drunk alcohol made from your subject of research (Goji wine from Lycium barbarum/chinense), drunk said alcohol with your advisors, drunk said alcohol while playing a drinking game with your advisors (and random drunk government officials), gotten an hour-long foot message with your advisor, discussed (at length) toilets and toilet paper with your advisors, and heard your advisors swear at least 500 times a day for the last week. Okay, for the last one, I might not be the only one, but I bet my level of swearing is higher.

To conclude, I will be on a plane home in a week. And generally, I’m really excited about it.

I also think I might be able to upload some pictures here, so if I can, I’ll pick some of my favorites and throw ‘em up.

Wow.

So, keeping a blog is a lot harder when you go for long amounts of time without internet access.

Back in Wuhan for a night after spending the last ~week driving around the rural Yunnan province looking for plants. Way too much to put into a blog post, so I kinda fail at that. And the internet here is too slow to upload pictures. But hey. I will make Flickr albums when I get back.

The food here is amazing, full of oil and fat and hot peppers and beer and strange other things that I don’t know. And I haven’t gotten sick yet. And the scenery was amazing, so the pictures I put up eventually should be pretty sweet. And we saw a 6-foot cobra crossing the road. And, found some of the plants we wanted, hey hey!

Tomorrow we’re flying to the north/northwest part of the country, and will be going to Ningxa, Xining/Qinghai province, and probably Urumqi/Xinjiang province. And internet access there will be even more limited, so feel free to respond here or email me, but don’t expect a response until…at least a week into June, maybe a few days after that…don’t really know…

But yeah, China is totally awesome. I’m sure I’ll be blabbing all about it when I get back, so I’m not going to put anything else here. But, it also has made me appreciate some of the things about my normal life that I wouldn’t have thought about otherwise…like, having a toilet and a shower be too different entities. And being able to put tap water (anywhere in the country) into your mouth without fear of severe diarrhea.  And, driving and having things like stop signs. And lanes on a road being more that just suggestions.

Wahoo wahoo wahoo!

Sorry to drop the ball on the blog, but yeah, I’m still alive, China is great, I miss everybody dearly, and am excited to eventually be back.

After a short flight to Newark, a 13 hour flight directly to Beijing, a 4 hour wait/nap sitting on the floor of the Beijing airport, a 2 hour but really, really bumpy flight to Wuhan, and a 1 hour midnight drive across Wuhan, we finally arrived at about 12:30 last night, China time. Which is 12 hours off. Needless to say, after that I passed out.

Today we met up with Jill and Rachel’s colleague at the Wuhan Botanical Garden, as well as three of the students in her lab. In addition to eating three huge and delicious meals (including two different kinds of lotus root and watching others suck marrow out of cow bones), we took a tour of the botanical garden, which was fabulous. It was a huge plot of land with thousands upon thousands of trees, vines, and flowers strewn about everywhere. Highlights: ginger flowers, kiwi plants (on vines! who knew!), banana flowers, pitcher plants, bamboo forest. I could have spent days just walking around, it was a beautiful place. I would load lots of pictures up here, but the internet in the hotel is dreadfully slow. Hopefully more will be up sometime later.

It’s still weird to think that this year is definitively over, and that I’m now on the other side of the world. But that’s a pretty thrilling thought.

So! I have yet to actually use this ol’ blog, but for the next month, I am hoping to use it as a blog to document my trip to China. For anybody who doesn’t know, I am going with Rachel Levin and Jill Miller, two AC biology professors, to collect Lycium plants, which I will then use as samples for a senior thesis.

Wahoo!