The end of an era, tune in for the thrilling conclusion to two great radio shows. Thanks to special guests Zach and Collin for doing the weather, and to Dr. Wood, Mat, and Ari for stopping by and helping out with the show. We couldn't have done it without all of you.

Aural Fixation and The Humpday Meltdown say goodbye to their loyal listeners and fans for all these years in this two part episode. Thank you all for your support, and please, continue to support KGSM.

Aural Fixation recently hosted a story slam as part of the Firethorne Literary Magazine's Spring Release. We hear from story tellers Alex Messenger, Ahna Gilbertson, Marie Bushnell, Joel Carlin, Ethan Marxhausen, Mary Cooley and Jenna Chapman. After winning a slam off with Alex Messenger, Joel Carlinmdash;Professor in the Biology Departmentmdash;won the contest. Here is the audio so you can judge for yourself.

Welcome to Aural Fixation the podcast for this final episode from Zhuhai. The story is a bit shorter this week than you are used to, but it summarizes what has been one of the semester's slowest and most relaxing weeks. The new year is here, and in many ways a new year can symbolize a fresh start, a clean slate, for different parts of our lives. For me it will be returning to the United States with a fresh perspective on the world, and a better understanding of humanity and myself. Tune in next week for the first, and only podcast of this series, produced outside of China. It will likely cover my experience with reverse culture shock and readjustment. Enjoy, and thank you for listening.

It seems only appropriate that the tropical storm of rain and humidity that welcomed me to China would be bookended by a spell of cold, biting wind and rain on my way out. The rain this time is not nearly as torrential nor brutal as that which welcomed me but remains, nevertheless, rain and brings with it the same mess of mud and similar dangers as usual; my shoes are not caked in mud but the Student Hostel Cultural Village's unpaved driveway-turned-mudslide still cases me to leave shoe prints all over the freshly mopped dormitory floors. This is my last weekend in China and to celebrate mine and Cynthia's imminent departures from Zhuhai we gathered our friends together for some spicy and magnificently delicious Sichuanese food at Lao Sichuan, a restaurant in Zhuhai's Xiangzhou District.

Apart from Sichuanese food, Lao Sichuan specializes in the high art of Kung-Fu-style Ba Bao Cha whereby each person is given a small cup with eight different ingredients inside and a lidmdash;used both to keep your tea warm while it steeps and to prevent you from sucking down one of the herbs giving your tea its sweet flavormdash;into which a professional shoots water from what looks like an oversized watering can from across the wide round table; it's difficult to put into words what exactly happens during this exquisite preparation exercise or what makes it so much fun to watch; perhaps it's the brilliant accuracy of the artistic server's ability to position the device's spout inches from the tiny cup and spray a concentrated and high pressure stream of boiling water while holding the canister upside down, behind his head, and arching his back so that the whole device doesn't hit the ceiling once he finishes pouring a perfect cup full of water and promptly snaps his wrist back to bring the instrument back to rest without soaking anyone in his audience in scalding hot water; it is, to be sure, a spectacle to behold. The food is served in the traditional ldquo;family stylerdquo; wherein the group orders and consumes all of the dishes which are served en masse atop a rotating platform in the center of the table, which circular buffet allows just enough room for each person's table setting:a small bowl and saucer, chopsticks and spoon and the aforementioned tea cupmdash;with a little extra room for a bowl of rice, should you request one. The food is served as it becomes available and a good meal is one where everyone is surprised by the seemingly endless encore of culinary delight, and leaves feeling satisfied, stuffed even, while not having actually eaten an entire, singular, meal. It's like thanksgiving dinner.

We were celebrating with Dee, Jack, Nicole, Ann, Nancy, Tommy and Alex. Like any or most attempts at organizing an outing in China, we invited 15, expected 20, and got nine; the only difference, logistically, was that we were only 15 minutes late instead of the customary 30 (on a good day) to 120 (on a not-as-good-day) minutes. During the bus trip on the way out the Xiangzhou we swapped various accounts of our respective New Year's Eve adventures and reminisced about the semester rapidly nearing its end. At some point I stared out the tall windows of the bus's rear door lost in thought, as I often am on bus trips, as I watched the Zhuhai city...

ldquo;It's safe to say that Charlie Brown would probably find Christmas in China the most vulgar and offensive exploitation of the holiday imaginable,rdquo; was my first thought after watching the timeless Christmas feature in which he stars on a briskmdash;but far from coldmdash;Christmas morning just before calling my family on Skype. The expat bar called ldquo;Ryan's Barrdquo; owned by an irish-canadian transplant in Zhuhai'snbsp;Xiangzhounbsp;district was hosting an all-you-can-eat buffet dinner event this Christmas Eve for 140yen; (or a little under $20) I thought I was slated to attend with my roommate and some friends of ours. The plan was to leave UIC around 7:30 putting our arrival somewhere in the 8 or 8:30 range depending on whether we took the public bus, a cab, or one of those faux taxi mini-busses; a perfect time to eat my only real meal of the day, I thought. When my roommate, Tommy, and I arrived at the bus stop and met up with our friends the plan slowly and mysteriously changed.

My first clue that something was going awry was when Tommy told me the bus I was prepared to board would not go to where we needed to be for the Christmas party. For a little background, I had been to Ryan's the previous night and took the same bus I was not being told would not take me there as my mode of transit. When my companions began negotiating prices I managed to pick up on enough of the conversation to know they were trying to get tonbsp;Jiuzhouchengnbsp;and notnbsp;Xiangzhounbsp;(where Ryan's is located) and at that point I knew that where I thought we were going and where we were actually going were in fact two very different places. ldquo;Stop,rdquo; I shouted, ldquo;Where are we going?rdquo; When it finally came out, I learned we were not going to Ryan's but were instead spending Christmas Eve in a KTV or karaoke club called ldquo;Seven Eight Ninerdquo; at which point I became irritated; I felt deceived and I was still hungrymdash;and getting hungrier the longer we spent negotiating with the minibus drivers*nbsp;to get a price that was not outrageousmdash;and beginning to realize that my Christmas dinner would be neither satisfying nor delicious.

While in transit to the KTV I found myself day dreaming, trying to stay optimistic and take my mind off of how hungry, famished really, I was, andmdash;as I foten domdash;watching the driver and bracing myself for any and all possible varieties of traffic accidents; I am really looking forward to getting back to road traffic that does not pose such imminent and realistic threats to my life on a regular basis, among other things. The best case scenario, I decided was ending up in Xiangzhou anyway and convincing everyone to go to Ryan's instead of this mysterious Seven Eight Nine placemdash;ldquo;did you know,rdquo; someone interrupted my train of thought, ldquo;if we had gone to the Seven Bar it would cost us 1,800yen;?rdquo; I had no idea where this was coming from, Seven Bar was the site of the incredibly over-the-top party I went to back in November where the drinks cost 50yen; for the cheap stuff, we weren't going there were we? ldquo;What are you talking about,rdquo; I asked with an air of confusion and irritation in my voice, ldquo;we aren't going to Bar Street are we?rdquo; I didn't know what I wanted but I knew that Bar Street food was expensive if existent and that cheaper food would mean leaving the party for a jaunt into another part of town, ldquo;no, we are going to the Seven Eight Nine.rdquo; Well that's helpful, I thought.

We were greeted with a red carpet and an entourage of Chinese ldquo;Pretty Girlsrdquo;mdash;young women hired by the club for the sole fact and purpose of looking prettymdash;in Santa Hats and red coats who blew party horns and popped party poppers all while welcoming us and wishing usnbsp;Shengdan Kuailenbsp;(圣诞快乐）or Merry Christmas. Inside the door is a life-size mechanical Santa singing Christmas songs surrounded by a more...

Welcome back to Aural Fixation the Podcast from China loyal listeners, after a two week hiatus while I was in Beijing we are back with a new episode that I wrote while sitting in one of the Hong Kong Airport's fine dining establishments and the China Ferry Terminal's Starbucks. It's getting close to the end of my semester abroad, and while Gustavus finishes up its final exam schedule, I am just beginning to prepare for mine. There are only three more episodes after this one, and only two more I will write while enrolled as a student at United International College. I am finding myself a bit exhausted from all the traveling and am looking forward to getting back to the old routines and established order of normalcy back home and this episode is a reflection on the last two and a half months I've spent here in China in attempt to dissect and identify the overarching ideas that have constituted this adventure, and without further ado I give you Fear and Loathing in Zhuhai, the eighth episode of Aural Fixation's special China edition.

It's strange to still be wearing sandals so close to Christmas time but Zhuhai weather is a lot like parts of California in that it rarely rains or drops below a brisk 55ordm;F; the buildings do not have heat, the dorms are not even insulated which makes for some chilly nights and mornings waking up on the rock hard ply-wood board I call a bed because even in the coldest months of the year the weather is still, generally speaking, pleasant to gorgeous everyday. Whenever I check Minnesota Public Radio's website or see a Twitter update conveying some kind of snow or cold related distressmdash;like road closures or people's eyelashes freezing together on their way to a final exammdash;before strapping on my Birkenstocks, I am reminded of just how great being here really is. As with any great adventure though, there comes a denouement point where the novelty of being away gives way to the harsh realities of what was left behind; I've begun to realize in the last two and a half months just how important the people, places, and things I left behind are in my life, and have grown to realize just how much I take it all for granted back home.

A close friend of my family is sick with cancer and her condition recently progressed to the point where the doctors said there was nothing more they could do to lengthen her life or cure her cancer, and I feel stranded and powerless to give her family and other friends the appropriate supportmdash;and while she still has the love and support of her other friends and family, I wish I were not in China right now just so I could see her smile and give her a hug, and the news of her condition came with an amplified effect as a consequence of my remoteness. It is moments like these that make study abroad so valuable. Time and again I am reminded of just how much of an individual or anomaly I really am. It is not just my white skin and blue eyes, nor my superior command of the English language and my funny American accent (all those things set me apart in a more apparent and obvious day-to-day way) rather it is my memories, my personality and experiences that give me identity unique from everyone around me: driving across the barren expanse of parched soil and sagebrush that is the Eastern Colorado wilderness leading, finally, to the majestic snow-capped summits of the Rocky Mountains; walking across the Mississippi River's Headwaters at Lake Itasca; the fact that I am one of a handful of people in this country who care or even know who Al Franken and Norm Coleman are, or have anymdash;if scantmdash;memory or knowledge of Bloomington Minnesota's pre-Mall of America days; it's humbling, in an ironic way, to have these claims to uniqueness. It forces a certain pride or appreciation for what was previously taken for grantedmdash;what I assumed or presumed would never have any further significance or semantic value beyond good family memories or a few points for Minnesot...

Here is the audio from last week's podcast. I apologize for the delay, I was a bit ill and did not have quite the vocal stamina to maintain the podcast. As a result watch for another one later today, as I'll be recording an episode about Thanksgiving in China.

It's a bit of an injustice to talk about environmentalism or construction and infrastructure development in China without mentioning the Three Gorges Project, for which China has been widely criticized both internally (for a while) and to a much greater extent by international environmental and human rights organizations. The topic, however, is strictly off limits from public debate and at the risk of saying something that might get me deported, I'll leave it to you the listener to determine the environmental impact of this project. I will note that Peter Hessler's River Town contains an in-depth exploration of the subject told from his perspective during his two years in Fuling, a city on the Yangtze.

A few weeks ago, the construction crews were tearing apart the paver-stone path that runs from the new dormitories to the campus. At first it was just a small square hole, barely wide enough to fit a person in, but each day it got longer. By the end of the week, the hole ran about thirty feet from the construction site at the top of the hill, down the path nearly approaching another, smaller, hole near the campus' entrance. The dirt dredged up from the hole probably a few feet deep, was piled onto the remaining pathway thus causing a significant disruption in the students' abilities to walk to class, bottlenecking traffic down to about eight feet of path space for two directions of traffic. The annoyance was easy to get past, but trying to figure out what exactly was going on in the hole was intriguing. Why was it getting bigger, and why was it being dug so deep?nbsp;

Around wednesday this started to make more sense. The construction crew had some kind of runoff stream running through a series of stepped streams down the hill through this tunnel. The stream appears to be coming from the living quarters of the cosntruction site and it seems to be a steady stream. There aren't many reasons for this consistent of a stream running from a bunker like this, and given the smell surrounding the path, it seems appropriate to conclude it was sewage. There is a similar stream running down the other side of the hill where the sewage runs through a series of channels and tubes, eventually spilling into a pool at the bottom of a short cliff near three manholes and Block One of the dormitories. At the other end of the path there is another construction camp and, running parallel to the driveway leading from the road up to the dormitories, a similar stream running into a giant pool next to the road. The smell on this side of campus is overwhelming to the point where you often need to hold your breath or cover your nose as you walk by.nbsp;

All of this causes some curiosity about China's environmental policy which, as near as this reporter can tell, has very little regulation. A Gustavus student who was in Shanghai last spring wrote a paper regarding the topic and described it as a problem of enforcement, rather than of policy. According to him, China's policy has, historically been very strong, and often progressive, on environmental issues. It's first policy was implemented during the Xia Dynasty some four millennia ago, and modern environmental policy dates back to the 1930s, and since 1971 China has an active record of environmental protectionism, at least on a national level. The problems, however, come about when the implementation and enforcement of these policies is left to the local government agencies. The local agencies are usually dually interested in both upholding the policy and in not enforcing it at all. As a general rule, the municipal government owns, or has a good stake in the health of, the local businesses: and we're talking big businesses like factories...

ldquo;Mr. Boone, you are asked to join Professor Kwok, along with Professor Holbrook, Professor Joyce Pfaff and her Husband, and Pat and Bill this evening at 6:30 PM. Please meet them here at 6:20 to take a bus to the restaurant.rdquo; I looked up upon hearing my namemdash;I was reading outside of the library on this particularly beautiful day, waiting for Cynthia to go to lunchmdash;to see Jasmine standing just left of center in front of me, ldquo;Please invite Cynthia as well.rdquo; The whole scene felt like it was out of a movie where the protagonist hallucinates people who tell him to go to certain places for meetings with other hallucinations that convince him to inadvertently do awful things; I felt like I was the protagonist in that movie and this imaginary person was tricking me into going somewhere where I would spend all of my money on a really expensive dinner for 8 that I would end up eating myself. This hallucinatory feeling was made even stronger by the fact that the sun was at a perfect angle to perfectly silhouette her face, making any attempt at seeing her blindingly impossible. Once I got over the surreal effect of feeling like I was in some kind of movie I realized how much of an honor it really is to be singled out for a dinner with the president of the college, and felt, once again, like a celebrity.

Six weeks into my time here I still feel very much like a celebrity. There have been a number of odd occurences that have transpired in the last few weeks that reinforce the notion that a tall American guy my age is a rare sight around here. As an example of what I mean by this: I was out buying some things I needed a few days ago and as I was walking back to my dorm a group of high school aged kids stopped me outside of a restaurant and asked me to help them with something. I saw a camera and assumed they wanted my picture, because most of the time that's all it is. It is still a little odd having people randomly asking for my picture around here but that is not what these kids were after. Their request was actually pretty simple they wanted me to stand there and stare at one of the girls in their group for two minutes while they recorded it on the camera. It had to have been the longest two minutes of my life. Though I can understand why they wanted a video of the only American they've ever seen, why they would just have me stand there, motionless, emotionless, and expressionless, is still a total mystery. On the plus side you can probably find a really awkward video of me staring at a chinese girl on the internet somewhere.

The dinner went from being at 6:30 to being at 7 and back to 6:30 again by the time we left. Cynthia and I weren't entirely sure where we were going, except that we had a business card for the place that Bill gave us to give to the driver. We were riding in the back of a minivan, with Professor Holbrook, our translator, riding shotgun and the Professors Pfaff riding in the middle. The trip probably took a little over a half hour, landing us, finally, at a restaurant somewhere near Junco, the giant all-in-one supermarket department store, like Super Target but bigger. We stepped out of the van and into the restaurant, which looked more like a small calligraphy gallery, and made our way up the stairs to the dining room, which felt more like a conference room than a restaurant. The room was a small room, but big for a Chinese restaurant dining room, with a round table in the middle, a mahjong table behind that, a flat-screen television and a computer tucked away in the corner. It had a private bathroom, and there were various pieces of art on the wall. A window looked out over the street below, which fact could only be derived based on the geography of the building as the drapes were pulled shut, and I spent a good amount of the time we were waiting for the rest of the party to get there, and while Holbrook ordered the tea, admiring the deacute;cor of the room.

...

Room 409 in Block 4 of the new dormitory complex at United International College is a cozy room sleeping two; the building is so new that it is not even finished yet. nbsp;It is substantially finished, meaning it will not fall over, and the fundamental pieces of its construction are complete. nbsp;The windows shut, the doors lock, and all the furniture is installed. nbsp;The walls are scuffed, however, because a paiting crew has not been around to paint them, and the tile floor in the hallway needs to be finished. nbsp;The floor in room 409 is finished, but appears as if the college finished construction the moment before moving in the students. nbsp; nbsp;The furniture is assembled, but the drawers in the desk, armoire, and under the bed still have woodchips and other construction related debris lying on the bottom. nbsp;The floor in the room needs a good sweeping as construction worker footprints can still be seen on the tile, and large piles of concrete dust and tile grout sit on either side of the armoire. nbsp;In short, the building may not look sharp, but it is livable.

The room is small and crowded, and with three beds and desks. nbsp;The other new buildings are still under construction so 409 has an excess of furniture because some of the rooms need to house three instead of the customary two. nbsp;Two of the beds are bunked and sit opposite the window and balcony door. nbsp;The two desks perpendicular to the bunked beds are separated only by a water cooler, the kind that might be found in an office, which serves up the only drinkable water in the room. nbsp;Against the window is another desk and bed that looks into the adjoining room, 411. nbsp;The concept of adjoining rooms doesn't work very well as the excessive furniture blocks any and all movement between the two rooms. nbsp;There is no open flow of traffic betweent the two rooms.411 is a mirrored image of room 409 and all of the furniture is made from the same maple-looking particle board, except the bed, which is really not much more than a sheet of plywood made up with blankets and a mattress pad bolted atop a cabinet like fixture with three drawers and two magnetic doors. nbsp;Another desk sits outside on the balcony, apparently 411 decided to put their extra desk out there, and it will make for a great place to do homework or talk on skype while the rest of the room is asleep.

The bathroom is the first thing seen when entering the room. nbsp;A frosted glass door separates the bathroom from the rest of the room, and a metallic latch on the inside keeps it closed. nbsp;Contents of the bathroom include a lockerroom-style shower stall, but with a better showerhead, separated from the toilet and sink by a sheet of the same frosted glass as the door. nbsp;No curtain, no door, only a sheet of glass just long enough to keep the shower water from spraying all over the sink and toilet. nbsp;The sink is a plain looking stainless steel basin with a simple faucet. nbsp;It seems pretty standard and reasonable for a dormitory, but when turned on it yields only a slow trickle of water, if anything at all. nbsp;The floor in the bathroom is even dirtier than that of the actual room. nbsp;Made from blue tile, there is a think layer of sandy soot: a mixture of grout, concrete and a myriad of other mystery dusts, covering the entire surface.

A large basin sits attached to the wall above the showerhead with highly insulated hoses jutting out from the wall into it. nbsp;On the front face of the basin there is an oblong shaped object that looks something like a gas gague and a dial on the side with one end marked with a snowflake and the other marked 75deg;. nbsp;It is turned all the way to the 75deg; mark. nbsp;Apparently this is where hot water comes from. nbsp;Part of the things still apparently on the list to complete in the building process is getting the water supply working properly. nbsp;Until Saturday the shower barely squeezed out any water at all, and on Frida...

I've intentinoally been spending as much time alone as possible this week. nbsp;Initially it was because I was homesick for the first time since my arrival and I thought I needed some space from the noise and commotion of my normal affairs here. nbsp;It's given me time to reflect on this experience, which is now a third finished, and how it has helped me as an individual. nbsp;After Chinese class on tuesday I had a secondary goal, to practice my Chinese.

My Chinese class moves quickly, like everything here, and I sometimes find myself lost in the tones, fumbling helplessly to write down a phonetic pronounciation while the rest of the class presses forward with the rest of the lesson. nbsp;There are a few phrases Ican say with almost total confidence: my introduction devotees will remember from a few weeks ago, counting and forming complex numbers, handling money, and how to call a waiter, place an order, and ask for the check; oh yeah, and the all important ldquo;ganbei!rdquo; which serves a clever and crucial role in getting myself and anyone else at dinner mercilessly drunk on baijiu (rice wine). nbsp;I can also do this rad tongue twister that goes like this: 四是四，十是十， 十四是十四， 四十是四十。 Which translates to 4 is 4, 10 is 10, 14 is 14, 40 is 40. nbsp;I'm impressed even if you aren't.

As far as practical skills go, I can order food, yes, but I can't actually read the menu. nbsp;When the convenience store clerk asks for ba kaui wu, I know he wants 4.50 yuan, but if I wanted to tell said clerk I thought he missed something, I'd have to foolishly point and gesture at whatever it was until he got the picture; or if all I had to pay with was a 100 kuai note I wouldn't understand when he told me I needed something smaller. nbsp;I recognize a few characters, but not enough to read the sign telling me the power in the dorms will be off between 9AM and 6PM tomorrow. nbsp;Luckily I have kind roommates and helpful friends.

It was partly because of these sumblings that I wanted to spend more time alone. nbsp;I wanted to try fending for myself and mostly I wanted to feel like an individual again. nbsp;I wanted the satisfaction of proving my ability to live here on my own, to prove that if I had to I could get by on my own. nbsp;After four weeks of clinging to my friends to interpret menus for me I was ready to cut the cord and take some control back.

As it turns out I am doing better than I thought. nbsp;It's surprisingly easy to get by with pathetic gestures and broken chinese. nbsp;I get the impression that it's almost expected that I will know about as much as I do and little more. nbsp;This gives me some comfort because at least I'm living up to their expectations , but upon further recflection I realise just how high the expectations are for foreigners back home, and ho much lower it is here. nbsp;Back home there may be a menu in Spanish, and a few chinese joints that have menus written in Chinese but the general sentiment is that if you're coming to the US, you're going to communicate with us in English. nbsp;Surprising for a country with so much diversity, it reinforces my long held conviction that the WASPy majority in the United States deserves absolutely nothing: no pity, special treatments, or any other kind of ldquo;helping handrdquo; in the United States.

This is not to suggest that China may not have it's own problems with its ethnic minorities in relation to the majority population. nbsp;I have not learned much about the subject, only that China has over 50 ethnic minority groups living peacefully together as one Chinese nation (which fact nearly every student here knows and quickly and energetically recites for me at every opportunity). nbsp;I am merely making the simple point that it is probably easier for someone who does not know Chinese to live here than someone who doesn't speak english to live in America.

All of this is coming into focus just as the election is wi...