VISA Date Set

[dabizi]

Ok, now the big news. Cindy got her interview date for her fiancée VISA. It is on November 23rd, so we are going to have to go down to Guangzhou for that. Early next year we are going to return to America.

Cindy is kind of nervous as she is leaving her mother and everybody she knows. She is wondering how it will fell to be the only Asian person around, to which I reply "Welcome to my world".

It is funny just a few weeks ago I was enjoying myself in my Chinese class so much, and I almost wanted to stay longer so I could study Chinese longer. After we found out about the interview, well now that going home is so very real I'm starting to get home sick.

Please, do not take the following as a complaint or rant regarding China. Coming to China was the most important thing in my whole life and I have no doubt that I will return sooner or later. I do love this place in a different way than America, but I'm being brutally honest in some of the below comments. This is about what I miss in America. Later I'll post what I'm going to miss in China.

Keep all this in mind and please do not take any of this personally.



This is no particular order, but things that come to my mind last Friday morning sitting in a classroom at TUT.

I miss Sunday's at my parents, full of family talking, children crying, dogs barking and many other types of organized chaos that make so great. Now they will have to buy an extra chair for Cindy.

I miss tree covered streets.

I miss turning up the music and speeding up on the on-ramp to the highway.

I miss going to the movies with my brother and rationalizing why we like a bad movie.

I miss trying to use logic on my nephew and just being ignored.

I miss my nieces, one who I barely know the other is not like I remember.

I miss American television, something just two years ago I would have never thought I would say.

I miss Chinese restaurants that serve sushi.

I miss American restaurants where one meal could feed a whole Chinese family.

I miss Mexican restaurants. Period.

I miss mock arguments with my sister about who is a worse human being.

I miss going over to my friends place a watching Stargate sitting on his couch. Too bad he moved away because now it won't likely happen again.

I miss ordering pizza and the price is not larger than my age.

I miss endless libraries full of hours of wasted time.

I miss not hearing "waiguoren", "laowai" or "hello" whenever I walk by people.

I miss going shopping and not being shown the most expensive thing in the store.

I miss going to parkland and seeing Ben at the computer labs.

I miss watching bad scifi with my dad, and he predicts everything that will happen.

I miss Hitler being a villain, not a role model.

I miss Wikipedia, BBC and the Google Cache.

I miss walking on the UIUC campus and felling like it was a United Nations meeting.

I miss other pedestrians actually making way for you.

I miss traffic laws.

I miss Burritos bigger than your head. Which is strange because they are not that good.

I miss people saying thank you.

I miss my mother's special lemon chicken.

I miss people saying excuse me.

I miss understanding why people do things.

I miss clean drinking water from the tap.

I miss personal space.

I miss not being the center of attention.

I miss bad fantasy novels (and good ones too).

I miss annoying guys at comic shops.

I miss racial sensitivity, of all things. It is something we don't have enough of, but some is better than none.