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August 30, 2000
I'm writing this journal entry on a keyboard balanced on my lap, looking at a computer screen that is too far away to be wearing my glasses. I am also hoping that eventually it will be up on my Web site. If not it will become another email message to the list serve.
I've had two very interesting days. On the 28th I returned to Changsha from my trip to the West of China and found that I still did not have a computer, and an entire box of 24 industrial strength AA batteries, for my digital camera, had been stolen out of my room. I wrote Grace Liu an angry and frustrated email, mainly to vent my feelings.
A few hours after I had sent the email, the young woman from the Foreign Experts staff whose been such a help, came into the office where I was using the office computer to do email work, and said, "Margaret, I have a computer for you!" And sure enough, there it was, sitting on the floor in the hall. We carried it and a monitor upstairs. We sat it on my desk, and I quickly realized I couldn't use it yet because there were not adequate plugs in the room, I needed a power strip. But, by golly, I had my hands on a computer.
The next day, on August 29, the director of the building helped me get the power strip, and I got it up and running. It's not Internet connected, but I am happily working on lectures and my journal. Of course, everything is in Chinese. All the commands, all the window operating stuff, but I'm able to guess correctly enough of the time. But if something strange happens I am really lost. I need to get on the internet and see how I go about changing the orders to windows so everything will be in English. There is no, I repeat, NO, computer support here. Appreciate what you've got, folks.
That afternoon, I received a call from a faculty member in the Tourism Department here, saying that she had received a fax of the email I sent Grace and she would like to take me to dinner and see what she could do to help. Boy, was I confused and upset. How in the world had an email turned into a fax, and how had it ended up in the hands of someone at HNU when I intended it for Grace?
Two women came to my building at 6 PM. One of the women explained that her colleague on the tourism faculty, who is at FP, had sent her a copy of my email and asked her to help. She also said that this was a person to person connection, and not official. That I shouldn't be upset about my email coming back to the University. This continually happens to me I China. About the time I get really frustrated and overwhelmed, a Chinese person will reach out to me. At one moment, in the deserts of Northwest China, I was feeling very isolated by the language barrier. As I walked toward the parking area, a member of my Chinese tour group smiling handed me a Popsicle. Isolation disappeared in that one gesture of kindness.
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