The Taigu Whole Day Triathalon

Just finished the Taigu Whole Day Triathlon. It does not take much training, but it is a blast. Here's what you do:

Hear knocking at your door at 8:30am in the morning on Saturday and pretend you are still sleepin because you know the only people knocking this early are your students or your housemates students. (You hope they are your housemate's.) Hear knocking at your door at 9:30am and pull on some pants over your boxers because you recognize the voices outside your door and they are definitely your students. Find out that they want to you to come with them on a trip to a nearby hill--they are going to leave in 10 minutes. You agree and throw on some real clothes. Bike, using a purple, rusty, single speed bike a little too small for you, through dry farm fields, dusty roads, country towns and past the occasional coal factory to get to a large hill. Climb the hill, with 14 grad students all carrying some barbecue ingredients including fresh meat, potatoes, green beans, steamed buns, a large Chinese knife, a cutting board, a nine pack of large bottles of beer (if you've seen Chinese beer bottles you know how big I mean), and of course, a mini grill and a lighter and some coal. And make sure to take the steepest path possible, preferably not very well worn, something that looks like what would be a deer path in the U.S, and once you get to the temples, take a picture of yourself and others about every 7 steps or so, or every time you think the view has changed. Once you finally make it to the top of the hill, eat a lot of barbecue and crackers and drink a bottle of beer. And make sure to take more pictures of this whole process. Spend a good amount of time at the top, spend some time playing cards on the cutting board afterward too. And on the way down, make sure to take a slightly wider path (because we do learn) but make sure it is still the kind of path that if you sat on your but you would slide all the way down. Then, ride your bike back to the campus with the large chaotic group, while forgetting turns along the way, and make sure to drop off your bottles at a grocery store to get the refund (yes, you did just bring them back down the mountain). Then, as soon as you go back, off to the school swimming pool, which should be a milky green color, because you have just been told that although it just opened there seem to be a lot of algae that they say are too hard to remove. Spend maybe one fourth of the time swimming laps and the other 2/3 of the time talking to people at either end. Then, take a massive shower with over 30 naked Chinese women (or men, if that's where you would go), get your body stared at and commented about as usual, and then put your clothes back on (which will also get stared at and commented about as usual because as usual, you wear a full layer less than everyone else, because, yes, it's warm outside and westerners don't wear long underwear in the spring, even if it is "spring" long underwear.) Then, wait an hour for friends, who you just saw at the swimming pool, to come to your house to go out to eat. And in the meantime prepare for a dance party. Go out to a nearby restaurant, eat a ton of delicious Chinese food, buy paper cups, run back to the house to meet people for the party. And then, put up the disco ball, set up the stereo, get together the music (probably get help from the other foreigners to do this, and most likely some of this is being done after the guests have arrived). Feel awkward for your students who have never been to your foreign parties before. Try despirately to make people feel comfortable by dancing like a fool. Then, try despirately to get your friends who you know can dance like fools too to dance. Then relax as you realize they are enjoying it, and dance crazily for the next two or three hours.

whew. I didn't plan for any of that to happen before hand except the party. But it was all really fun.
And now it's really time for bed.