(no subject)
Hi. Sorry I disappeared again.
Hong Kong was fantastic and amazing and lord I'd like to live there some day (how many times have I said that . . . ), the only thing I really ought to tell you about was Spring Festival, and it was kind of boring. Think like Christmas in the U.S.: can be pretty boring 'cos everyone's with their family. Instead we went to the bars. There was a parade, fireworks, but nothing overall spectacular and "Wow, this is really China." Oh well.
I've been in sort of a bad way since coming back from Hong Kong, Culture Shock-wise. It started with weather: the weather there is beautiful and warm, and the sky is blue and it's clean. We get back into China and immediately it's cold and rainy and you can't see the sun and it's dark. Then I started thinking about other stuff. People didn't say stupid shit in Hong Kong, but as soon as we get back into China we have people sitting on busses talking about how they don't understand us. We show one little kid some foreign money and like a hundred adults come over and crowd around pushing each other saying "that's not our money! That's money from another country." We get back to people gawking at us slackjawed like morons, people yelling "laowai!" We get back to Yibin and it's horribly muddy and noone understands my Chinese (with which I had no problem communcating for the past month - people in HONGKONG Speak better Putonghua than people here) and immediately we have difficulty taking a taxi because we're foreigners . I start thinking about my job and how most of the students don't give a shit.
WHAT AM I DOING HERE!?!? Good Lord! Why on Earth did I come to shit-kicking Small Town China!? I feel like the people here are just so closed minded and unable to think I can't even talk to any of them.
It's like, I came to China, realized there was a bunch of bullshit, and said "fine, this is China." But then I went to parts of China that DON'T have these problems, realized that I could've gone THERE instead of HERE, and all the sudden it hit me how retarded these things are. WHY oh WHY didn't I go someplace that HAS A CLUE ABOUT THE REST OF THE WORLD.
Luckily for me Scott's scout leader sent us the second season of Sealab and Pete and Pete and Scott and I bought every episode of CSI Ever on DVD (40 of them) in Hong Kong so I don't have to leave my house. I've talked to Ko about this, it's amazing how much I'm following exactly in her footsteps linguistically and culturally in terms of adaptation and learning. So she says by March I'll probably be better and ready to start again. OK.
Lord I don't want to teach on Monday. Grah. Hopefully I'll have time to write something else before classes start again.
Hong Kong was fantastic and amazing and lord I'd like to live there some day (how many times have I said that . . . ), the only thing I really ought to tell you about was Spring Festival, and it was kind of boring. Think like Christmas in the U.S.: can be pretty boring 'cos everyone's with their family. Instead we went to the bars. There was a parade, fireworks, but nothing overall spectacular and "Wow, this is really China." Oh well.
I've been in sort of a bad way since coming back from Hong Kong, Culture Shock-wise. It started with weather: the weather there is beautiful and warm, and the sky is blue and it's clean. We get back into China and immediately it's cold and rainy and you can't see the sun and it's dark. Then I started thinking about other stuff. People didn't say stupid shit in Hong Kong, but as soon as we get back into China we have people sitting on busses talking about how they don't understand us. We show one little kid some foreign money and like a hundred adults come over and crowd around pushing each other saying "that's not our money! That's money from another country." We get back to people gawking at us slackjawed like morons, people yelling "laowai!" We get back to Yibin and it's horribly muddy and noone understands my Chinese (with which I had no problem communcating for the past month - people in HONGKONG Speak better Putonghua than people here) and immediately we have difficulty taking a taxi because we're foreigners . I start thinking about my job and how most of the students don't give a shit.
WHAT AM I DOING HERE!?!? Good Lord! Why on Earth did I come to shit-kicking Small Town China!? I feel like the people here are just so closed minded and unable to think I can't even talk to any of them.
It's like, I came to China, realized there was a bunch of bullshit, and said "fine, this is China." But then I went to parts of China that DON'T have these problems, realized that I could've gone THERE instead of HERE, and all the sudden it hit me how retarded these things are. WHY oh WHY didn't I go someplace that HAS A CLUE ABOUT THE REST OF THE WORLD.
Luckily for me Scott's scout leader sent us the second season of Sealab and Pete and Pete and Scott and I bought every episode of CSI Ever on DVD (40 of them) in Hong Kong so I don't have to leave my house. I've talked to Ko about this, it's amazing how much I'm following exactly in her footsteps linguistically and culturally in terms of adaptation and learning. So she says by March I'll probably be better and ready to start again. OK.
Lord I don't want to teach on Monday. Grah. Hopefully I'll have time to write something else before classes start again.