the city in the centre of the world

sitting in an internet cafe in kunming now... around me, i'm surrounded by chinese men shouting at each other, smoking pungent honghe brand cigarettes, spending their sunday afternoon playing internet games with each other...

yesterday was only the 2nd day i have been in kunming, the capital, since coming here to yunnan... we've been to 4 towns and 3 villages in these last 2 weeks, i can't remember the last time i had 8 hours of sleep and i can't remember the last time i wore clean clothes before yesterday... these last 2 weeks have been the the most memorable of my life. i have...

-helped clean a leper's sores
-brushed my teeth on a rooftop at 6am, over a bowl, to the sound of roosters, spitting out over the roof
-eaten twice the recommended servings of vegetables in a day for the last 2 weeks
-played basketball in a village
-inhaled an insane amount of second hand smoke
-spoken more chinese than i ever have since junior college
-shared a village meal with villagers
-touched a TB lymphadenopathy lump in a 7 year old girl who will not receive treatment in the near future
-dangled off the tops of cliffs in 4wd jeeps
-shared a bus with pigs under the seats, roosters on the roof and birds in the front
-attempted and practised handstands on rooftops and basketball courts
-heard the most amazing christian testimonies
-not spared an american endless hill-billy jokes and anti-american slander (all in good humour)
-bonded with 3 other christian chinese medics in a way i have never done so before...

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the four musketeers
deserve a whole blog entry on our own... me, a singaporean chinese, alex, a canadian chinese, weiyao, a malaysian chinese, and joanne, an australian chinese. despite only having met alex and jo 2 weeks ago, we are like 4 peas in a pod just now. it's crazy! together, we have.. helped translate classes for the village teachers, fought off deadly mosquitos and 2-inch-long-dung beetles, cockroaches and bees, been packed on china buses together, waded through mud, pushed broken down buses, hung out with lepers, ate yucky vegetables that taste of fish, suffered the aches of china toilets together, got drunk on bai2 jiu3, watched amazing sunsets, trekked through a cemetry, played one too many games of cards, etc etc....

so yes... china has been amazing.. at about the halfway-point of my travels. 2 more cities in the next 3 weeks.. updates to follow soon!