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As the days have been turning colder and the daylight scarce, I assume many of you have wondered, “what ever happened to Stephanie and Cody in China?” Well, wonder no more! Its update time, with all the gritty (interesting?) details included. Here we go, time to get excited:

In mid September Stephanie made it back home safe and sound, battling Hong Kong hurricanes, towing several hundred pounds of luggage (mostly collectible rocks, I think) and even an overnight airport slumber party. While she was making her way across the Pacific, I, Cody, was heading back north on a day-long train from Guangzhou to Chongqing. Once I arrived in the hilly city of a scant 30+ million (total municipal population), I realized why it is often referred to as one of China’s “three furnaces.” Just walking in the direct September sun for about 10 minutes following signs from the train station to the long-distance bus station had me sweating like I meant it. I never actually found the actual bus station, but after a bit of hard-line bargaining I found a 4hr bus to Chengdu via a rogue carrier service, including a free back-of-motorbike shuttle to the launch site. On the bus, I met a woman from Guangzhou (south China) who gave me a bag of soybean snacks and passed my email address along to her daughter with whom I’ve traded some concise but pleasant correspondences in Chinese. Back in Chengdu!

Since then my time has mostly been spent studying Chinese at Chengdu’s Southwest University for Nationalities, with classes M-F, from 8am until 10:00, 12:00, or early afternoon. I ride my bike very fast to get to class every morning, slowly to get home. (See photos/video) I am currently living about half an hour (on two wheels) away from classes in an apartment with three young Chinese professionals: Liu Weijia, a lawyer, Song Keqing, works at nearby university, and Fan Saimeng, employed at Agilent, a former division of Hewlett Packard. We all get along swimmingly and spend quite a bit of time chatting in both Chinese and English, addressing language questions when they arise. It is a great environment for language learning, and with the early addition of the ‘white board’ in the living room, non-native language acquisition has advanced considerably.

Besides schooling, I’ve been keeping busy with the Chengdu Rugby Football Club, with practices a few times a week and a few recent matches including the Guinness International Rugby 7’s tournament in Shanghai, and the hosting of the Beijing Aardvarks 15’s match in Chengdu.

The Shanghai 7’s was quite a weekend and unfolded like this: Friday evening saw the Chengdu Black and Whites (Pandas) flying to Shanghai for the Saturday and Sunday tournament. Only one passenger missed the flight (our coach), and no bags were lost. We then made our way from Shanghai’s Pudong Airport to our hotel, unfortunately via taxis, not the ultra-fast-but-not-quite-practical-for-us maglev super train (268mph!!!). Early Saturday morning, after the hotel’s complementary breakfast (with scalding hot orange-drink), we arrived at the pitch along with the 15 other teams and warmed up for our first match. Our pool included the Shanghai Lemurs (crafty, fit Shanghai expats), Shanghai Sports University (fitter college athletes), and the People’s Liberation Army--Guangzhou chapter (the fittest of the bunch; also strong, fast and tough; not to mention their sharp looking team haircuts…). Tournament 7’s rugby differs from your standard 80 minute match, 15-players-a-side ‘Rugby Union’ rugby. A 7’s match is played on a full-size field with seven players to a team and seven minute halves, resulting in a much quicker-paced style of play. Our side had a considerable amount of talent, but lacked a bit in 7’s experience and overall fitness. What does this mean in the end? An absolute slaughtering! We lost all three pool games, including that to the future championship contenders, the PLA. We decided to play our Sunday morning match right away on Saturday afternoon, and even though it wasn’t as bad as the first three, we still came out on the losing end.

All was not lost, however, as we were the definite winners in the team uniform division of the tournament (unofficially) as all 20+ members of our traveling club were outfitted in all-white Taiqi uniforms and custom made black and white panda masks. Upon arriving at the Saturday night tourney dinner, we were a site to be seen. After a lovely high-end hotel buffet dinner, crass rugby songs, and Guinness sponsored boat races (team-based drinking competitions), we started a long night in some downtown Shanghai bars, still in panda costume, as is to be expected. Sunday ended up a bit overcast and rainy and the pitch turned into an absolute mudhole. Upon seeing all the mud and hung-over Pandas, we were all glad to have played our fourth match on Saturday instead of 8:40 Sunday morning. We then watched some more games, and left from the pitch directly to the airport, arriving back in Chengdu late Sunday evening. The weekend, in true rugby tour fashion, was spent playing and watching rugby, without much Shanghai sight seeing… but who goes to Shanghai to see the sights anyway!

The next weekend’s rugby match was played on our home field, and not having to travel to play in an actual match is a great thing to wake up to on Saturday morning. The Beijing Aardvarks are a team similar to the Chengdu Black and Whites in level and general attitude, which resulted in an exciting, even match. After a long Friday night (4-5am?) for some of the visitors, our 1 o’clock kickoff probably came a bit early, but the sun was shining on one of the nicest days in Chengdu in recent memory. We played a full 80 minutes of rugby (four 20 min quarters), with tries being scored on both ends. With around four minutes to go in the match, Chengdu down by two points, a few nice passes and a crafty scamper put the winning try into the end zone for the Black and Whites. Final score: 27-24 Chengdu! Here’s a rousing write-up of the match on the Chengdu Rugby Club’s website: chengdurugby.com (Note the, ahem, mention of the ‘flyhalf Pyfer’, ahem…)

Besides competitive international rugby and the being swept up in the brisk world of Chinese academia, how else do I spend my time, you ask? Well believe it or not, there’s still plenty of time on my hands, but much of it just gets used up in the day-to-day grind. I end up riding my bicycle for at least an hour every day as part of my commute. Very near the apartment is a vast vegetable/meat/fruit/etc. market and we are therefore able to make nice dinners and lunches at home. Also abundant, however, are great neighborhood restaurants, including a friendly Muslim restaurant that I will undoubtedly long for once I return home, and Jiachang Mian (home-style noodles), a restaurant that we simply refer to as “downstairs” because of how close and convenient it is. I will also most definitely miss the title dish (home-style noodles) with its cabbage, spicy red broth and the lingering “that was a bit too spicy” numbness on the lips. Not to mention the $.60 price tag!

As I post this, I have one month before my time here is up and arrive in the snow-covered paradise of Wisconsin in January. What am I planning on for the last 30 days? Besides the allotted two hours a day in front of the "Stephanie shrine" (I miss you Stephanie), I will also make room for the following: A christmas trip to Jiu Zhai Gou complete with some of the most amazing landscapes on terra firma, a few end-of-semester exams to see how all this "Chinese study" is going, the publishing of a highly anticipated (mostly by me) language-specific travelblog, a potential trip with roommates to nearby Chongqing (unfortunately not one of China's "three furnaces" in the winter ), and a sad good-bye to this great place.

Thanks to everyone for giving this a read-through; I hope you enjoyed it!

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