Dalian update: squattypotties & sittershitters

I am not just learning Mandarin here in Dalian. Every day I bump into the Clermont-Ferrand people and put my French into practice, but even my English vocabulary gets a boost now and again. Coming back from university today, somehow Henry and I started discussing the toilet scene here in China. Mainly about how happy we are that our appartments are furnished with "western-style toilets", as opposed to "Chinese style", which is basically the same type as the traditional squatting toilets in France. Joel - my flatmate from the middle of nowhere in Alberta, Canada - looked at us rather confused and asked: "oh, you guys are talking about squattypotties and sittershitters?"

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Joel is a quiet type, he doesn't easily start a conversation and he only says as much as strictly necessary. Someone once stating curiosity about the time of day told me she asked Joel whether he was wearing a watch. Upon which he simply replied "yes" :-). He is approaching his 30th birthday, so like me he is one of the older students at the University of Technology. He used to be a plumber in Canada, in a town somewhere between Edmonton and Calgary. At some point he also worked as a butcher. But gradually I have gathered he has been around quite a bit in recent years: England, Australia, Korea... Yesterday night he even explained how he and a travelmate bribed a North Korean guard at the China-Korea border in Dandong to set foot on "forbidden soil", i.e. North Korea. The Yalu river dividing the two countries is apparently very shallow in parts and also freezes shut on occasion. A pack of sigarettes for the guard was all it took. Joel collected some "North Korean" stones and soil as a reminder of their little walk. There was nothing to see, of course, it was a riverbank in a forest.