A New Climbing Gym

One of my teachers had helped me find the website for the climbing/backpacking club on campus, and I had gotten their office number in the Student Activity Center. After class got out I went by to see what I could find out. I found the office ok, and low and behold, there was a club member there. At first, I thought she was there just to talk to strangers about the club, but I think she just had a break in between classes, so she was hanging out in the office. Whyever she was there, she was really helpful and answered all of my questions. She even got out a couple photo albums that I could look at. Then she told me that the club was going climbing tonight, and I was welcome to go if I wanted to. She gave me someones phone number and told me to be at Gongguan metro stop at 6:30, then call this number. So I did. The guy I called told me to wait. So I waited. Then he texted me another phone number, and a name, Keke (but with a lower 'e' sound, not like Kiki). I couldn't get my phone to call Keke, but, just as I was becoming frustrated, Keke came up to me, and everything was resolved. We waited a little on one other guy, then found out he was already on his way there, so we headed on too.

Keke was a nice guy, but we weren't able to communicate much because what Chinese I have failed me completely tonight. I think it was a combination of reading an english book all weekend, and there is just a lot of jargon that isn't in the regular Chinese curriculum. I did manage to find out that Keke is a physics major and he just started climbing because he thought it was a cool thing to do. He reminds me a lot of one of my friends from college (Zev), who is a Microbiology major, and started climbing for very similar reasons. They even smile in a similar way.

This gym dosen't beat around the bush at all. Its a small gym designed for training and little else. It is on the second floor, in what probably used to be an apartment, but someone decided it would be better as a climbing wall. It is one rectangular room, about 10 feet high, with about 2/3 of the walls set up for climbing and covered in holds. Roughly half of the cieling is covered in holds, so you can go from one side of the room to the other, without touching the floor. There is another room that has pads, and has obviously been used for climbing in the past, but right now I think they are chaging the holds over.

I talked to a couple other people from the club, but not too much. This was the first time I've been completely unable to communicate, in any way. My Chinese isn't that good, and my grammar is frequently poor, and I very frequently don't know the word I'm looking for. But I can always communicate. I have to work at it, and it takes a lot more time, but I've always been able to get my point across, even if I do have to use long complex and roundabout explanations. I wanted to tell this guy, "I think I could get it if my foot would stick on that hold." The concepts of 'get it' and getting my foot to 'stick on that hold' were the most difficult. I managed to get across 'get it', but I was at a complete loss as to how to say, 'stick'. I tried saying 'not move up or down', and 'not move up' and 'not move down', but all were to no avail. It occurs to me now that I could have tried to say that I didn't want my foot to fly, but I didn't think of it at the time, and even if it had, whether or not my companion would have understood is a mystery.

However, I like the gym a lot, and if I keep going back, I will certainly learn all of the jargon.