If you lived here you would be home now

I live in Lanzhou, Gansu, China. It is the other side of the world and the other side of everything. My head is spinning and I am overwhelmed with trying to set up an apartment and get ready to start teaching by Monday. I will live here for a year teaching English composition at Lanzhou Jiaotong University. The students are in a special program where they transfer to Iowa State as juniors and my job is to give them the same level of writing course they would have to take at ISU but the difference is that these students are way below that entry level and they are not immersed in an English speaking environment so it's a harder job and a much harder living situation. I'm still trying to get settled, but this is the hardest thing I've ever done in my whole life.

Google earth Lanzhou and see the huge pollution cloud above the deep valley. A lot of it is ultra fine sand from the Gobi dessert, a lot of it is coal smoke from all the cooking fires and heating, and there are also heavy metals from the chemical plants along the river (the Huang He or Yellow River). I'm in frickin outer Mongolia with many non-Han ethnic minorities and dirt poor under-served populations. 3.3 million people live wedged lengthwise along this East/West bend in the river where the mountains rise precipitously on both sides, trapping the grime and haze, making this one of the world's most polluted cities. The travel guide books all mention Lanzhou because it is a railway hub and an historical outpost on the silk road, but they tactfully suggest moving on as quickly as possible. My goal is to find a reason for them to add a new chapter that gives this place at least a day on the itinerary.

For now, 5 days into living here, just trying to get the simplest food or household necessity is a huge task because Chinese is really hard to pick up and none of the other customary body language or basic transactions are in common so I can't even mime and point my way through it. Today I did better than the past four days. I made it to market and bought fresh produce and spices and eggs from the street vendors. Tomorrow I'll try to get a cell phone - an impossible task on my own, I'll get help - but I have to have one to be able to order drinking water and to be able to call a Chinese speaker if I get in a jam or get picked up by the red army (just kidding, I hope).