11/19 Sunday

I woke up early to catch an 8:50 train out of Datong, and stopped to get a meager breakfast along the way to the train station. Noticing it was 8:48, and Chinese trains do start on time, I had to run to the station and through the gate to hop on the train. The doors closed about a minute after I got on. It was a good thing I didn’t have to carry any luggage.

We had seen a group of American students at the Grottos, but hadn’t made anything of it. It turns out that my assigned seat was directly across from theirs. There were two boys and a girl. I introduced myself to them. They turned out to be University of Chicago students on a term abroad. They were all from the US, but the girl, Angelica, was an American born Chinese, and still had relatives on the mainland of China. They had been enjoying their time in China so far, but their program would be ending on the 8th of December. We talked and played cards for much of the long train ride back to Beijing.

We arrived in Beijing at around 1:30, and I caught a ride with them back to where they were studying, in the west of the city, and continued on to the music school. By the time I reached my place, it was already 2:30 and I was supposed to be at the soccer pitch at 3:30.

I rushed and got another cab to the pitch. I didn’t know where the field was, and since my phone was dead from the weekend in Datong, I had to borrow my cab driver’s to call one of the guys on the team. Upon arriving at the field, I realized I didn’t have enough money to pay the cab driver. I had to run to the pitch, and after introducing myself to the rest of the Barbarians, I had to ask for some money to pay off the driver.

I realized that I hadn’t eaten any lunch, and that my breakfast had consisted of some pieces of break and a small bottle of orange soda. I would have to play on an empty stomach.

I didn’t tell everyone that I hadn’t played in over 3 years, and they put me on as a starting player at center back. I had good confidence that I remembered how to play though. The other center back was a guy from Germany called Christoph; it turns out that most of the players on the Barbarians are foreigners from Europe and America. I had a great game, stayed in the entire game, and ended up bloodying up both of my knees. We won handily, 6-2, against a Chinese team called Snickers, obviously sponsored by the candy bar manufacturer. There was one white guy on their team and when I asked him how he communicated with his team mates, he said, “I don’t, I just score goals.” I am not sure how well that works out, but it may help explain why we beat them so badly.

We all went out after the game to a pub and Christoph was nice enough to buy me a pint of Guinness. We stayed there for a while watching soccer, and later headed home.

I was almost totally out of money at this point (I had kept the change of what one of the Barbarians had given me so I could pay him back with a solid 50 yuan bill), but knew that I would be able to get some cash out at a 24 hour ATM near the school. As it turns out, there was a problem with the electronic communication between the bank and my account in America. I was unable to withdraw cash, even though other Chinese customers were able to. I was really stuck, and I could only pay the cab driver 20 out of the 27 yuan I owed him. We stayed in the cab for a while unsure of what to do, and he was getting mad. I didn’t have any money in my apartment, and I wasn’t sure if anyone would lend me money at the music school. I decided to see if my landlady was in, or if my Malaysian neighbor was there. I told the cab driver to go back to the music school, and I told him that I would go in and see if I could get some money. He wanted me to leave my back of soccer equipment, in addition to my camera, in the car as security of my return. I told him that I would return repeatedly, and finally got out with all my stuff. I went inside and couldn’t find my land lady or my neighbor. I went into my room to frantically scavenge for semi-valuable stuff that I could give the driver in exchange, but could only come up with some food items and 1.20 in loose change. After about 10 minutes of looking, I went back down to the gate of the school, carrying a back of offerings, but found that the cab had gone. I felt really bad, and knew that I had marred the face of foreigners across the city. Luckily, I didn’t have to deal with the problem any more. I was dead tired from a long weekend and a 90 minute soccer game.

The brown liquid I discovered on Thursday in my kitchen is advancing farther towards my living room, and giving me less space to move around in my kitchen