Monday, August 29, 2011

rainy days

The past few days I have been in a daze, feeling glossed over, mechanical.  The off-and-on rain hasn't really brought much of a cooling effect.  Today I slept away most of the day's middle hours, deciding to eat a true breakfast at around 5PM.  Part of this could be the fact that the past few nights I've been up until around 2AM which is pretty drastic for a bookworm like me.  The good news is that I've been out up so late because I have made friends with Chinese people.  From now on I will just call them Chinese friends.  There really is no bad news about this even though that may have sounded like a lead-in, but let me continue...

Aghh...somehow I got distracted and didn't finish this entry yesterday.  That's really okay though because there's something new to talk about everyday.  Today was another rainy day.  I'm sitting in a nice quiet coffee shop/café as I probably would do in America.  Maybe I like this place because it is less-Chinese than most of the places I go to--it is a good break.  Also, Sophia, one of the first Chinese friends I met, works here.  She has the distinction of having the most elegant English name of all the Chinese people I know; it even fits her gender, unlike that of the friendly girl at Dairy Queen named Ben who helped me last week.  Sophia insisted I order my dinner in Chinese this evening because she knows I want to learn Chinese and join the CCP and then hopefully the PLA as soon as possible.  I ordered pumpkin soup (didn't even update my Facebook status yet--you are hearing it here first!!) but there is no taste even moderately resembling pumpkin in the soup.  However, the soup tastes good in a different, non-pumpkin way.

Regardless of pumpkins, today I received a call from the Foreign Affairs Officer at my school saying I could move into my school apartment today.  He called in the morning and I heard him say that sometime after lunch  he would be by the apartment so I could come by and move my things in.  Unfortunately I didn't get a call from him until around 17:00, saying he would be near the apartment at 21:20.  So, I will go there tomorrow and settle in.  I have mixed feelings about moving to a new place.  My current apartment is in a badass location, close to all sorts of nature spots, food spots, places to get tea or coffee and hang out and a pretty good restaurant that is open until 02:00.  Also, I'm fond of my roommates.  Aside from being built-in friends because WE'RE AMERICANS IN CHINA, they're really cool and I feel we're on similar wavelengths.  Those are probably the biggest reasons that moving isn't yet a 100 percent welcome transition.  To the potential credit of the other apartment though, I haven't explored the area it is in quite as much as this area.

So maybe I'm feeling a little anxiety, hesitance about everything.  As long as no bombs drop I will start my job as a "foreign expert"/English teacher within the next few weeks.  My three month vacation is winding down and I really do feel I've made the right decision to come to China.  Hopefully I will continue feeling that way.  The experience so far has been amazing, full of bewilderment, irritation, nervous laughs, milk tea, eggplant and people yelling "HELLO" as they pass.  As always, travel makes me appreciate America more and more.  Each night before bed I find myself humming the national anthem while I stretch my legs beneath my gigantic American flag blanket and stare at the poster I got printed at Sam's Club of Betsy Ross that is glued (by semen) to my ceiling.

Talk to you soon friends!

1 comment:

  1. Brian, Brian, Brian!

    You're in China man?! That's wild. You probably have no idea who this is...but I still listen to that live Smashing Pumpkins CD bootleg you and your bro sent me in...hmm....2000? 2001? A while back. I'm currently listening to lots of SP and a band called Thrice. This is Adam btw, your crazy internet friend who met you through napster... I was checking out my deviant art page for the first time in a long time, and remembered every crazy thing about you the second I saw "brian 2". Do you still have my email addy? If so "email me you nigger!" haha. God bless

    Adam from tha internet

    ReplyDelete