Laura and Francoise at the Market

Laura and Francoise at the Market
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

A favorite spot for many people is the Bird and Flower Market, an

indoor/outdoor bazaar/flea market that sells plants, animals (pets or

meat?), flowers (cut, live, fabric, you name it) -- and host of other

things from Little Red Books to antique ceramics and coins spread out

on blankets in the corners and back by the railroad tracks. These are

two of my colleagues and housemates on a trip there one Sunday.

Downtown Intersection

Downtown Intersection
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

In this shot you see one of the main intersections in the heart of the

older part of town, with a back view of one of the big government

buildings. (Despite its rather odd pseudo-Aztec/zigurat look, it's

rather a nice building with lovely gardens in the front.) The shots

immediately after it are all very close to this intersection. The

first two show different angles of the same intersection, which is

right next to a major bridge over our river, and also right next to

the biggest shopping district in town -- complete with Wal-Mart, the

big movie theater, and several different department stores and

shopping centers. In two of the shots you'll see, if you look

carefully, the logo of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Naturally the

games are a VERY big deal here in China, and even in Nanning -- almost

as far south of Beijing (which means northern capital, of course) as

you can get and still be in China -- you see the logo adorning ads for

any number of companies. (FYI, the shot with more building and less

street shows the building that houses Wal-Mart. The shot with more

street, where you see the guy pulling his cart behind him, gives you a

small inkling of the craziness of these streets: I just wish I'd been

able to get a shot of the donkey cart that passed through the

intersection a few minutes earlier...)

Downtown Scenes

Downtown Scenes
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

Downtown Scenes

Downtown Scenes
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

Downtown Scenes

Downtown Scenes
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

Tree Lined Streets

Tree Lined Streets
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

Tree Lined Streets

Tree Lined Streets
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

Downtown Canal

Downtown Canal
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

This lovely canal winds through an older section of downtown Nanning

-- narrow, winding streets on each side, and this canal running

through the middle. It's quite lovely, and as you see the trees are

currently in flower...though the water's no picnic, and I hate to

imagine of the folks in the next shot are fishing. :-)



In the shots after, you'll see a bit more street scene on an old

shop-lined street next to the train station. If you look closely

you'll see I was sort of following a woman who was lugging tons of

bananas on one of those traditional balance-on-the-shoulder things. My

heart really went out to this woman: it seemed the bananas she was

carrying on this blisteringly hot day must have weighed nearly as much

as she did.



I wish I'd had the guts to take more pictures on this street: the guy

walking across the street carrying some large firm sheet of something

odd-shaped, which when he slapped it down on the sidewalk a few paces

away from me turned out to be the dried skin of a shark. He slapped it

down next to piles of things that looked like they might be dried

pigs' noses, but based on the taxadermically-mounted very large dead

white shark sitting in the storefront, and the shark skin that was

added as I watch, I deduced this shop sells various elements of dead

sharks. Sort of brings all those articles I've read in environmental

magazines to life in a new way.

Fishing? By the Canal

Fishing? By the Canal
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

Woman Selling Bananas

Woman Selling Bananas
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

Woman Selling Bananas

Woman Selling Bananas
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

Lion Hill Park

Lion Hill Park
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

Lion Hill Park

Lion Hill Park
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

Self Portrait with Tropical Vegetation

Self Portrait with Tropical Vegetation
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

As you may have noticed, I tend when alone in a place to take a

self-portrait, which of course usually ends up looking a bit

idiotic...though at least this way you know I was really there and

it's really me taking the shot. About three weeks ago -- same weekend

as most of these other shots -- I braved a new bus line to an area far

north in the city, where I've not previously been. How, you may ask,

did I choose this neck of the woods: by looking at the map and picking

what look like park farthest away from where I live, of course!

Sometimes I feel a bit pinned down in one spot, since work is pretty

consuming, and I live a short walk away from where I work...so it

becomes too easy to walk a path between my house and the office and

rarely look up and see the sky.



As you'll see, the park was well worth the visit!

Dinner Chez Moi

Dinner Chez Moi
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

Following this note will appear several shots of my expatriate

colleagues at a dinner party on the terrace at the house I live in the

-- the house where we do all of our team parties, since it's the only

house with good space to entertain. Parties like this are not uncommon

-- potluck, everyone brings something, and we all sit around and talk

about the week, and what the coming week will bring, what's

happening in other missions, and life in general. I've felt very

fortunate to have a really good group of people to work with

here. You may remember an earlier picture of the baby girl -- Marta,

whose parents Stefano and Katja also show up in some of these

pictures, though she's also shown sitting on Laura's lap sometimes.



Stefano's fieldco of the AIDS project, and Laura's a nurse there;

since we (plus Katja) are the strongest English-speakers in the group

here in Nanning, we often end up talking together or going out to

dinner together. They're all great people, and I'm going to miss Laura

a lot when she leaves -- in less than a week! :-( This party sort of

honored the arrival of a new medical coordinator, who is replacing the

young woman with the big smile that you'll see in the solo shot. We're

all missing Selina, who left this past week after more than two years

working here in various capacities and being one of the driving

spirits behind our projects here. I sure hope no one minds my posting

these.... :-)

House Party

House Party
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

House Party

House Party
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

House Party

House Party
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

House Party

House Party
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

House Party

House Party
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

House Party

House Party
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

House Party

House Party
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

Greetings & News

Howdy folks. I've been working for a bit more than an hour at this point and have only managed to post two photos, sadly the two I least needed/wanted to post -- but the way I try to work is I put the up first the ones I want to show up last on the current posting -- since they go chronologically, if I've got 30 photos (which I do) to post, I put the least important ones up first, and save the best for last...so that they are the most recent post when I'm done.

But, by way of "slice of Paul's life," here's what's happening. I have to post these from the one office computer that has internet access. This means I store the photos on my own computer, and then put them on a stick and bring them to this computer. Four times now, I have moved back and forth between the computers with my stick: either copying and pasting, or opening and saving as, each of the photos I want: I've got some pics of a group dinner at our house with most of the expat team; I've got pics of me at a lovely park here in town; I've got some lovely street-scene pics of here in Nanning. Each time, they seem to save fine on the stick and I can even open them...but when I get them over to this computer, poof, they've become corrupted.

Since I got here at 9:00AM and it's Sunday, I was alone and it was quiet at first. But now other folks have shown up, and frankly at least one of them is rather lingering by the computer...and between that and the frustration, I'm going to give up for now, and go home to have some breakfast and read. I spent much of yesterday doing various bits of work to catch up for the fact I was out sick 1-1/2 days this week; and life is made more interesting -- and exciting/rewarding -- by the fact that we're sending a big truck full of supplies (sanitation, shelter, medicine) for flood relief in an area of southeastern Guangxi where there have been massive floods, with apparently millions of people displaced from their destroyed homes.

It seems quite possible we'll do not only this three-day relief and exploratory mission, but there's a chance we might launch a longer term (three month?) general relief effort, with a new team of expats that would come in, and some new national staff as well. So this could make my life even more interesting and busy in the coming months. For now, I was supposed to be on a flight to Beijing today, for advance planning of our move there; but since most of the office is clearing out for the relief trip, I'm staying behind to coordinate things, and to complete the transfer of some accounting work from my desk (coordination) into the hands of the AIDS project itself. Aftger they all get back, on Tuesday night, I'll head off to Beijing -- Wednesday morning. A few days of checking out the options there, then I'll head off for my week of planned vacation, after which I'll finally spend some more time with our Baoji project -- the one of which I posted some pictures earlier in the blog. Sadly, I've not been up there since then, and I'm supposed to go every five or six weeks.

Things are definitely busy! Anyway: there are some great photos I hope to post before I leave for vacation, but if I fail, then I shall try again in August. At which point I should also have some pictures of Gansu and Ningxia, Buddhist cave art, Daoist sacred mountains, and Tibetan monasteries. I've heard this week from two friends who tell me they've been regularly keeping up with me through the blog, and this warms my heart -- that's precisely why I maintain this. (Thanks, Connie and Mike!) A challenge to life with MSF is that one is so far away, and -- as I've now reported -- communication can be challenging. But I'm committed to this blog for as long as there are friends and family (and, hey -- I welcome new friends, especially ones who are cute and single... :-)) out there reading, I'll keep posting. Sorry so few pics this time.

More later, and much love. I hope my friends are about to have a lovely Sunday back in the US. And special thoughts are going out to my friends in London, none of whom are likely to read this since I know you all have busy lives. But I'm thinking of you -- Peter, Tracy/Jon/Jacob, Pete L. and Tim...

Love,

PB

Big Bug

Big Bug
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

I close with two small snapshots of daily life at home for me. The

first greeted me outside my door one morning upon waking up. Yes, as

you saw in the walking tour, we do live in an embarrassingly large and

luxurious house, but it's still the tropics and still a developing

country in all the good and challenging ways. We've got lizards in the

house often -- which we welcome since we sleep under mosquito nets; we

get more flies and bugs than I can describe. And one of the wonders of

Nanning and southern China in general are the HUGE and gorgeous

butterflies that flutter everywhere. This one's a moth, with a body

the size of the palm of my hand. I did not see it with wings open, but

it was beautiful. Less beautiful are the gigantic spiders (legspan

bigger than my hand, body size of thumbtip) that appear on the walls

occasionally. Then I'm glad of the mosquito net. I have NO idea if any

of these spiders are venomous. Oh well.

Self Care :-)

Self Care :-)
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

And yes, this is a teeny bit of showing off, although those who know

yoga will see how far short I fall in this pose. Last December, when I

knew I'd be leaving LA and losing my access to strong, regular yoga

classes with excellent teachers, I decided I had to commit to enough

classes in a short time to bring me to a level where my personal

practice could stay strong even on the road. My holy grail -- what I

wanted to achieve in one month, before leaving -- were two poses I'd

never had the confidence to master: handstand and forearm balance

(sorry, I'm bad at Sanskrit names). This picture shows me trying to

reach toward scorpion pose -- a step beyond forearm balance, and my

ultimate holy grail. In true scorpion I'd be in the center of the

room, with my feet all the way down resting on my head.



Anyway, I throw this in here because 1) my very dear old friend Steve,

in Boston, asked if I'm able to take care of myself here, and this is

part of the answer; and 2) in case my classmate Michelle (or teacher

Cindy) from LA see this, I'm reminded of a nice talk over coffee that

Michelle and I had last year, where we talked about how we were both

trying to get to where we could do scorpion against the wall (like

this), and how she got turned around in her mind once on the pose, and

fell. I'm sometimes afraid that'll happen, but this is part of my

regular practice now. Wow. Amazaing what we can do if we decide to.