New Bicycle

Yesterday was the first day of warmth and sunshine since all the rain starting last Thursday. Ah, t-shirt weather again - I hope it lasts for a few days at least before it probably chills down again. But no worries, I finally decided to pull out the electric blanket from my wardrobe that one of the former interns left here. It's a true luxury, especially because we don't really have heating here for our apartment.

For our classes this week Rebecca and I are using music. We are using Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again," having students listen to a recording of the song and going over the lyrics. We write them on the board, leaving a few select words blank, and having the class listen to the song and fill in the blank. When we finish the lyrics, I use my guitar which I bring to class to sing the song myself and encourage the students to sing along with us. Since that didn't take up the whole class period, for the first couple of classes Monday Rebecca just improvised and played Journey's "Don't Stop Believing." It was a pretty cool moment seeing a class of 60 Chinese kids singing along to Journey.

However we decided that besides Willie Nelson we'd need another song to cover in the rest of the classes for the week. For the second song we're doing Pete Seeger's cover of Malvina Reynolds' "Little Boxes." We explain to them what the song is about, being as it's critical of an aspect of American culture. Both songs are fairly simple and clear in the language and singable, so we figured they'd have little trouble deciphering the words.

Yesterday I decided to walk downtown and buy the bicycle I've had my eye on for the past week or so. I've had a difficult time finding one that actually fits me, and this one is close enough to my size to fit comfortably. I paid 360 yuan for it, which is about $52 American, not bad at all.

Here it is. You can see that the cranks aren't at a perfect 180 degree angle, cus the left crank went completely loose on me earlier today. I had a mechanic fix it up but I guess he didn't do a perfect job. Ah well, it still feels normal to pedal and I can always take it to the place I bought it and have them fix it up.


Today I took a nice ride down a street that ended up taking me out of town. I don't know how far I went, but somewhere between 3-5 miles out I'd guesstimate, out to another nearby small town. There are people everywhere, so there weren't really any lonely stretches like you often have on country roads in America. I've become used to the traffic for the most part, I just always check my six every few moments for trucks and motorcycles approaching. But I have a lot of confidence in drivers and motorcyclists over here since bicycles are everywhere, so they know to look for me.

Here's a typical scene on the bridge that we cross to get over to the main street, on the way back to the school. You can see a full-ish moon, the same one from back home!