On my last day in Xiamen, I went out with Yuan, Eddiot, Bruce Lee, Lai, and Michael from my lab, and we had one last amazing meal of mudskippers, jellyfish, clams, and all kinds of other tasty seafood. When it was time to say farewell to my labmates, it was truly one of the saddest moments of my life. These are people that I feel like I have spent years of my life with, not just seven shorts weeks. It is amazing to me that I was able to become such great friends with people I was almost completely unable to communicate with just a few weeks ago. Although I don’t know when I will be back to China to see them, I guarantee I will keep my promise to be back to see them at some point.

Now that we are in Beijing our tourist activities have started up again in full swing. Today we went and saw the Forbidden City as well as a few gardens and lakes nearby, and tomorrow we will go and see the Great Wall. Of and if you are ever in Beijing, make sure you get some of the fried scorpion on a stick, it is absolutely amazing. Make sure to take that stinger off though because I am really feeling it today. I am sure we will all have tons of fun over the next few days, but for me just getting to know my labmates will surely have been the best part of the trip and some of the best times of my life.

Thanks to everyone who has made this trip possible. Bryan signing out.

I am continuing to have a great time in Xiamen, and I really wish I had more time left in college because I would love to spend an entire semester here. The few things that seemed strange or I didn’t like when I first came here I have grown to live with and even enjoy some of them. For instance, my journey through the world of Chinese cuisine really got off to a slow start, and I thought I wasn’t going to make it 8 weeks eating Chinese food. I have now tried food I would have never imagined eating, and other than the occasional pig intestine or bee in the chicken, I really love most of the food I have eaten.

Language wise, I still struggle most of the time communicating with people outside of my lab. For the most part I am able to get through situations just by pointing and looking confused, but it was very frustrating when we were at the club the other night and there was a beautiful girl that I asked to dance with me, but of course she had no idea what I was trying to say so I just had to slowly walk away.

A little side story… for the most part we have done very well with the public transportation using the buses only requires memorizing a few characters and the cab drivers can always get you back to the university, but the other night we truly took a bus trip for the ages. So before we even get on the old 48 bus, the driver manages to hit a man driving on a moped and although he wasn’t injured, it was still very shocking to see. So despite our best judgments we still get on the bus and as we are going we realize the bus driver is an absolute maniac. He was using all four lanes on the road, two of which were full of cars heading in the opposite direction. So as we are coming into a stop our bus legit crashes into another bus. Instead of stopping and seeing the damage, the lunatic shoots a dirty look at the other bus driver and speeds off as if trying to make up time. We then pull up to a traffic light and as it turns green, the driver looks out the window and as a cab starts to pass us, the bus driver guns it and forces the cab into oncoming traffic. By the time we finally got off this hellish bus trip I was truly thankful for my life, and I can guarantee I will never ride the 48 bus ever again.

Outside of some celibate fish, I am having an amazing time. As I said, last week was a holiday in China; therefore I went with five of my lab mates to one of their family’s apartment. We had an excellent lunch of mudskippers, pig stomach, and chicken feet. Although it sounds like an unusual lunch, I absolutely loved it, and I had a great time spending time with my labmates family and becoming ‘Uncle Bryan’ to my labmates nephew. Although my actual experiment is developing slowly, my time spent with my labmates has truly been the most fun part of being here.

I am still having a great time exploring around Xiamen. Last weekend, we went to see the earthen houses in Tulou. These houses are like giant villages that are contained within a circular or square house that are made entirely from dirt, clay, and bamboo. Some of these houses are so big, that around 400 people lived in one at one time. For our trip, we had an awesome tour guide who spoke great English and even brought us to her home village where we had tea with her and her mother. It was an excellent day that ended with our guide serenading me with a beautiful Chinese love song.

This past week, I kept very busy going out to Gulangyu Island, climbing the mountain behind Xiamen University, and trying to go see the dragon boat races which we ended up missing because we went on the wrong day. I have also been playing basketball just about every day of the week. It is a lot of fun just going down to the courts and finding random people to play with.

Hopefully by next week, I will be able to talk about all my fresh accomplishments in lab! Until next time…

This morning, we went to the market and bought new Chinese black sleepers in hopes that they will be more successful in our spawning experiments. We will repeat our injections and experiment in the following days.

As far as outside of the lab, life in Xiamen continues to be exciting. I have been amazed as to the level of excitement towards basketball and the NBA here in China. It reminds me of how excited people were for basketball back in the days of Michael Jordan. Sports have been one of the biggest topics for conversation with people inside my lab and we even played basketball with some of the Chinese students.

Over the weekend, I went with Yuan and visited the Nanputuo Temple which is a Buddhist temple that was founded back in the Tang Dynasty. One of the monks is a friend of hers and we were able to get a tour of the temple. The most exciting part was eating at the cafeteria at the temple which was quite an experience. The cafeteria is usually for the monks only so it was Yuan and I eating with about a hundred monks. As we were going to eat, Yuan started explaining all the rules to me and then informed me that no one was allowed to talk during the meal. This made for one of the most interesting meals I have ever had as I tried to remember all the rules without asking what to do. Overall, the visit to the temple was an awesome experience, and I am thrilled I was able to meet and talk with one of the monks.

It is still strange to me to be considered a foreigner for the first time in my life, and I know this experience will give me a much different view of the foreign students at Eckerd College. It has been very funny every time I get on the bus and have people staring at me and having people take pictures of us or even asking to take pictures with us.

Although some things here seemed so different initially, I am definitely starting to acclimate to living in Xiamen.

My lab work is about to get much more involving as well will be starting an experiment on Thursday night and we will be in the lab until at least 2am observing pairs of Chinese black sleepers reproducing.

As far as my interactions with people here, about half of my lab mates as well as my professor are somewhat fluent in English and are more than willing to learn English from me and teach me Chinese phrases. Outside of the lab, I have run into maybe five people that can speak any English whatsoever. This has created some interesting situations at the cafeteria and at different restaurants when we have no idea what something is and are forced to randomly point at a food dish. This has led to some very bad choices especially for Mike.

The city of Xiamen is much slower placed than Hong Kong is, but this is not to say there is not plenty to do. There are many markets, huge shopping malls, Buddhist temples, and even a very interesting aquarium to explore. The only parts of my experience that have been less than enjoyable are the lack of a washing machine and dryer which is terrible because nothing dries thanks to the humidity and the squat toilet which may possibly be the worst invention ever created.

Stay tuned for further updates…