how do you measure progress?

By the bag?

By the quad?

By the movement of a shadow across the pavement?

I thought I was on a roll, but today I realized I have made some plant ID mistakes that will probably result in me redoing about 2 days of fieldwork. So frustrating. I have to keep reminding myself that, due to time constraints, I have had to learn the plants as I go; never an ideal situation. The field assistants that actually know the plants, and could potentially help me, only know the Chinese names and do not speak any English. So I'm kind of on my own. Seriously regretting my general lack of proper botanical training. At least my 250 soil samples are all sieved and labelled!

living arrangements

Life here at the Naiman Desertification Research Station is pretty slow. I'm not really complaining-- after 6 months of total insanity, an enforced slower pace is probably good for me. However, sometimes I need a little more stimulation than hanging out with myself and my laptop in my little room every night.

Since I am a 'foreign guest', I am housed in the newest building (see dormitory). It has rooms for senior staff and professors on the first floor, rooms for Chinese guests on the third floor, and rooms for foreign guests on the second floor. I assume these divisions are mostly due to the style of toilet, but I haven't seen inside any other rooms to check out any other differences. I happen to be the only guest at the moment, so I have this floor all to myself. I am also the only woman in the building, as the staff, professors and researchers (kind of like post-docs) are all men.

The Chinese graduate students (male and female) are housed in a building across the courtyard.
For the most part this is fine with me. I mean, I 'm not going to complain that I have my own bathroom and I don't have to hike out to the outhouse building all night. And it is not as if all the other grad students are over there having a party every night. Most of them spend their evenings in their rooms on their laptops too. But they have their doors open, and people are coming and going and chatting and whatever... there is camaraderie.

It is not so much that I am lonely, it's that I am bored with myself and my simple little evening routine of blog posting and yoga podcasting and chinese lesson listening....

I leave for a conference in Beijing in 2 days and I am so ready for a break. I booked my train ticket a day early so I can have a day in the city (still by myself, but at least there will be things to do!). Then in the eve I'll meet up with some other American grad students for some good old-fashioned happy hour. Hallelujiah.

So much STUFF:

Packing the night before I left was, in hindsight, not the best idea. I brought waaaaay too many clothes. I mean, obscenely too many. What was I THINKING? I can't even tell you the bad choices I made regarding footwear.

However, I did make a few wise choices. The smartest things I packed were:
coffee
plastic baggies of various sizes
Sharpies

I was feeling crazy for bringing them, but all were infinitely more wise than the 4 pairs of shoes I left back in Beijing in a fellow grad student's closet.

In fact, I should have brought more coffee. The coffee was definitely my best packing decision.

oh, the FOOD.
The thing about being at a field station is that I have to eat what they prepare, and I can't really skip a meal, or people get worried. However, this is not a prob b/c the food here is excellent, and I am going to come back to the US all roly-poly from my three gigantic meals every day. So many different veggies at every meal! (all cooked with meat in them, of course). Americans don't know what they are doing with vegetables.
This does not stop the station director from asking me quite regularly if I wouldn't really, honestly, rather be eating hot dogs. I try to explain that even in America I eat more Chinese food than hot dogs, but he's lived in the US, and knows that American-style Chinese food is pretty much the same thing as hot dogs, when compared to real Chinese food.

the LANGUAGE

maybe you didn't get the memo, so let me fill you in on a little-known secret: Mandarin is HARD. Even when I think I know how to say something, I invariably get the tones wrong. And even when I'm pretty sure I have said things correctly, everyone still busts out laughing everytime I speak, and repeats what I say like an echo.
Me: "Han hao chi."
Everyone around me: chuckle, chuckle 'han hao chi!' chuckle chuckle.
All in good fun, though. Right?

setting PRIORITIES
Speaking of trying to learn the language, I might have to put all of that on the back burner a bit and focus on the real task at hand (research) and the impending Task of Doom which is my oral exams, which I have to take when I get back, and for which I should be spending all of my free time studying, except that when you don't even know how to ask the nice man with the keys for the key to the lab, and it is locked, and you need to work on said research, well... sometimes I go in circles regarding the priorities.

crazy-making
I have mentioned in the past how spending long hours in the desert turns my brain into a budget, poorly curated diner jukebox. Today's hit? Red Red Robin.
Yeah, that one. The bob-bob-bobbin'-along one.

accoutrement

breakthrough

trying to get started on data collection

It has been a week of ups & downs.  On the up side, I had a chance to take a day trip to another province to check out a research station there.  But I have been running into lots of snags on my way to getting my research really moving along.  I hit my lowest point a few days ago, when the communication issues, research planning stress and linger health-related issues all collided into a wet, soggy pile of kleenex.  I think part of the problem was/is also that, while everyone here has been more than kind, I have no release vale here -- no way to get away from it for a few hours and blow off some steam.  I need a happy hour!  But I've been receiving great support from afar from friends and family, which has helped immensely.  

i love the straight up old-school labs around here

Today I found some different equipment that will help me to do what I need to do in a more timely fashion, and had a chance to talk through my experimental design with one of the grad students here who had some really great feedback and tips, based on some of his previous research.  I'm feeling recharged and ready to get (re)started. 

I've also been tracking another blogger, as she documents her international research, and she is pretty much writing the exact words & emotions floating around in my brain, but in a much more coherent way, so maybe you should just go ahead and read her blog instead.

sample location H-S1-5

i know, right?

These clouds are intense.

biggest lie ever told

Feels like particle board. I can no longer sleep on my preferred side due to the bruises on my hips. !!!

indeed

breathe

The good news is that I have a plan. I've morphed the things I wanted to do in the first place, and have figure out how to apply them to some different study plots in order to still get data that are relevant to my thesis. So, that is good.

Now, two hurdles stand in my way.

The first is money related. In the US I pay (or rather, my grants pay) to have all of my soil samples tested at a specific soil-testing lab at another University. This is a good plan b/c I don't have any of the right equipment at my school or, more importantly, the skills to do the lab work (I'm an ecologist, not a chemist!). I can rely on the results when actual chemists do the work, so it's worth it to pay for it. However, in this case things are much more complicated. There is some lab equipment here at the station, and I think some people just do their own analysis here. And that would maybe be an option for me if I knew what I was doing. Instead I have 2 options -- 1) send the samples (and a wad of cash) with one of the professors back to their university in Lanzhou to be analyzed there.
2) export the samples back to the US and use the same lab I always use. This is kind of preferable, for standardization's sake, but involves a whole lot permits and a hope and a prayer that they don't get seized at the border. I have the US permits, but the China ones don't seem to be happening for me. Either way it is going to be expensive. Quite expensive. This is a bummer, and makes me wish I has the skills (skilz) to do it here. Why didn't I pay more attention in chemistry?! (b/c I was busy staring out the window wishing I was out in the field looking at plants....).

The second hurdle is transportation related. I can't actually get to work until the driver is free to drive me to the sample plots. He seems to be booked with other things until at least tomorrow afternoon.

Rather than fret I am going to look on this as an opportunity to work on some stats for some other data, go through another Pimsleur language lesson, and maybe do some yoga.

All in good time.

it's official

where i'll be

Hey guess what!

I'm going to do fieldwork in China for 8 weeks this summer!

I've been holding off on talking about it here until I got the final-final word, but that just rolled in, so now I'm all set, pending any weird visa issues.

I'll be funded through a fellowship program of the NSF (that's the National Science Foundation for you non-nerds).  I'm flying in/out of Beijing & doing a few things there first (like a language intensive!  how do you say "what is the name of this plant?" in Mandarin?), but I'll be spending most of my time at a field station in Inner Mongolia, studying desertification, and desert grassland restoration. Hooray!

Basically I'll be wandering around in the desert by myself for...hmmm, let's see... by the time you account for the time in Beijing on both ends, plus getting to & from the field station & getting set up... crikey, that works out to be about 40 days.... alone... in the desert...

-cue dramatic motion-picture music here-

So, I've already asked a few peeps for advice, but if any of the rest of you out there have any tips for traveling (mostly alone) in China, I'm all ears.