okle, china post!
so these stories are going to have no discernable order to them, they're just going to be stream of conscience things that i remember from the trip. some will be funny and interesting, others... not so much, but the chance of reading something great will keep you coming back for more!
so anyway towards the end of the trip as beijing became less of a freezing cold mass of grey dreariness that made you want to kill yourself and instead transformed into a simmering polluted kettle that made you sweat your balls off just by standing outside (no lie or exaggeration there. if i was outside from late april through the end of the trip and i didn't have a cool beverage in my hand, my balls were literally sweating) we began to play touch football games. the beijing institute of education campus could not handle a game of this sort since it really didn't have much free space (though we did have a basketball court) and the ground was all cement anyway, which isn't really conducive to any type of football. so we began to play football at the college campus next door which had a giant artificial turf field.
we technically weren't allowed to use the field since we weren't actual students of the college. however, being the rebels that we are, this did not stop us. we just went onto the field. i think we were questioned once but we just told them in chinese we attended the school and were left alone after that, which is all that matters. so we'd take up around, i'll call it 40% of the soccer field for our game. there was still enough room for a large soccer game on the field, and they weren't using it anyway, so no worries. one day as we were playing, some punk douche chinese kids decided after their gym class ended that they were going to play a little soccer by shooting on a goal, which is within their right. however, they had to choose the goal right in the middle of where we were playing. what started out as annoying began to piss us off very quickly as they wouldn't move out of our way. it all culminated on a 4th down play where a pass was thrown to si de fu (sp?) but instead of catching the pass (which should've happened), he piled into one of the snot nosed assholes who were interrupting our game. after that we got pissed at them, which led to us insulting them in english to their faces (which of course had no effect since they didn't understand what we were saying) and us kicking their ball away if given the chance. after about 10 mins of that, i think they understood whos field it was and they left, never to be heard from again. that is the power of american intimidation.