things of note of late

these shall be mentioned in reverse chronological order, so as to skew everyone's sense of time and not just my own.

1st (which actually means second), i am the voice of the local supermarket. my super smoove (and oh-so velvety) vocal stylings were recently called upon by the resident rt mart. also know as the most accessible supermarket here in town with the best/most varied alcohol selection. it's like the chinese equivalent of gerbes. i heart gerbes. or i hearted gerbes. we're paying a lot of attention to past tense verbs at the ol jobby job these days, so i need to be a little more conscientious. anyhoo, said mart enlisted the services of ef and i was the lucky broad chosen to pepper their chinese supermarket soundtrack with bursts of my painfully neutral midwestern american accent. each nugget started with "dear customers" and ended with [what ultimately ended up being more emphatic than is naturally possible in my register] "thank you very much." the computer we recorded the "tracks" on was even crappier than my free computer and i had to yell to be heard, all while surrounded by uniformed staff members gawking at me like the zoo creature i've been reduced to. the first mic sucked, so the guy left and came back with a brand new one. easy, right? he works in a supermarket. it took me 5 months here to end up with a mic for my computer.

it was quite interesting to see the inner cogs and wheels of a chinese supermarket though, especially one that was as bustling as this one. i never saw the innards of an american supermarket, but i would guess that there's not that much of a difference. the most striking thing about the whole scenario was this giant bookshelf full of individual tea thermoses (thermi?) back in the "employees only" sector, all with pieces of further yellowing masking tape denoting rightful ownership. they were all exactly the same model--hundreds of them. and why wouldn't they be, they came from the tea container aisle in the store below.

there are so many images that i'm bombarded with on a daily basis which are laden with a pungent authenticity, and yet it was this particular random thing that firmly planted itself in my memory. tea containers trump large plastic tanks teeming with turtles in the fish and meat section. turtles replete with mysterious wounds. actually, this is pretty weird too. now seems like a good time to wax tangential. the first time i saw all of them, the actual physical existence of a tank full of turtles so readily available for purchase and subsequent human consumption wasn't as disquieting as the fact that these little creatures that were so green had such red blood. it was fascinating and i wasn't quite ready for it. it's not like they were gushing blood, but i suppose battle wounds are to be expected when your existence is comprised of living in a pit of your own kind at a chinese supermarket and being forced to crawl all over your kinfolk in order to procure some air.

secondyfirst i went on a date with a chinese dude. this was actually quite a while ago, so the fact that it is far in retrospect will only contribute to any embellishment on my part. the idea of me on a "date" is funny enough. add in that other small fact that he was chinese and something far short of hilarity ensues. or ensued, since this was about a month ago. again with that past tense. on new year's eve when it was a fucking nightmare trying to get a taxi, this nice dude offered to share his with me. i humbly accepted. i gave him my digits (or rather, rory's digits since i had just lost my phone). we texted back and forth a few times. me feeling ridiculous and sort of dirty all the while for reducing all communication outside the vein of ef to text message exchanges with a relative stranger. there was definitely something unsettling about that. my world is so insulated right now that i have a hard time interacting in any capacity with those who aren't regulary immersed in my routine.

anyhoo, we hung out once and drank copious amounts of tea. that was fine, we talked about all the fun things we would do the next time we hung out, all of it buzzing with the feigned innocence of 13-year olds not fully in charge of their hormones. hmm. it's just feels really bizarre to explain this whole exchange. it was so adolescent. anyhoo, it was really hard for me to decide whether or not i was attracted to him. seems like that should be something you just know. but my sense of attraction and/or attractiveness has been all out of wack since i've been here, with rare opportunities to manifest (this isolated human being the only opportunity in damn near a year. that's a nice way to refer to it, an "opportunity"). i was attracted to the idea of being attracted to someone. again, it's been a really long time. anyhoo, we eventually went out again. it was very strange to wake up on that particular morning, knowing that ultimately, in 12 or so hours i would be in the unique position of obliging or denying the sexual advances of a chinese man quite a few years my junior. and when i woke up, i knew this was a fact. it was somehow comforting. if i chose to succumb to lust (whether motivated by desperation or something else), i had a sure bet. it's just never been that clear-cut before.

so we went out and drank some beers. me with the hope that alcohol might coerce me into shirking this rampant strain of rationale and responsibility in me and allow me to do something crazy and inarguably stupid for once (enough of this wishy washy shit, let's make some overtly bad decisions!). and i marveled at how attractive he was. and the simultaneity of how unattracted to him i actually was was the overriding thought for the next few hours. and still, i let him walk me home, knowing it was going to end in an acutely awkward manner. and it did. get this: i hugged him first. i'm 30 years old and i hugged my "date." yup, now's where it's appropriate to mention that i didn't go to my senior prom. probably a reason i wasn't pursued for that. so i marveled, audibly, at how awkward the whole situation had become. and then we kissed and i just stood there like a rock (albeit a rock with a tongue), images of the dirty dishes in my sink and the lessons for the next day relaying through my head in a swirling and anti-libidinous manner. he started to get handsy, so i just pushed his arms aside and said ok. please get out of my apartment. and that was it. i guess he went to sri lanka for a job. but as he was leaving i said i'd call him. and i didn't. and that's the only time in my life that i've ever used a line like that fully aware of the fact that it was a line like that. fact of the matter was, attractive or not, he was still chinese and he was still significantly less physically formidable than i. the cavewoman in me still likes her dudes to be more intimidating (physically or otherwise) than she.

i suppose this is all for now. the reality is, the past few months only generate 2 nugglets. so i owe it to myself to stretch and distort my stories in order to make my life in hindsight a hell of a lot more interesting than mere fact alone reflects.

oh yeah, in a few months, me and my backpack get to hike through a gorge. hooray, nature.

when life gives you lemons, make mustache-ade

the winter course cindy of whom i spoke. she showed up about 2.5 hours before her class started. so i decided a mustache (afixed with double-sided tape) was in order.


sock puppets!!!!!!

attempts at video of lunar new year shenanigans

lunar new year and stuff

today marks day 5 of my vacation for the lunar new year here in the china. a near week characterized by nothing short of over-consumption: food, drink, battlestar galactica (feel free to roll your eyes, naysayers!). gluttony totally rulezzzzz!

i should also note that there have been some annoyances, for what is a blog of mine if i don’t complain about something. there’s a well-founded stereotype about the chinese and their fireworks. you can buy fireworks pretty much anywhere. we’re not talking just bottle rockets and sparklers, though those are in abundance. but anyone can walk up to the convenience store, or any number of little stalls set up along the street, and purchase the fuck-off big ones, a la jefferson city, mo’s “fire in the sky.” the shit they launch from the barges on the river. anyhoo, you might be saying to yourself “hey, large, fuck-off fireworks are cool!” and yes, i agree with you, but it sucks to hear these arguably minor explosions 24-7. you buy them, you can light them whenever and wherever you want to, including the wee-est of morning hours. great.

funny thing, fireworks remind me of my old dog, lobo. they used to make him shit instantaneously; those and the start gun for the little olympics. you need only make the mistake of taking a large alaskan malamute with shaky bowels to a public fireworks display one time. i seem to recall bahb handling it a lot better…

the other annoyance would be my water. on day 1 of vacation, some random water pipe of mine broke. i live in a ginormo apartment complex, and MY pipe chooses to break at the beginning of the biggest, most important holiday of the year. people don’t work during this time. daily life ceases to exist, rippled metal doors concealing each and every vibrant shop front. taxis? gone (funny story here, though. i was at the grocery store, arms full of various sundries. a taxi rolled up and i was nearly tackled while a man carrying nothing raced in front of me to steal my taxi. so that was cool. and not uncommon). people? gone. the logistics chick who handles these sorts of inconveniences for the foreigners from our school? gone. but she could still text message! ha ha! the point being that i couldn’t use the bathroom, shower, wash dishes, cook, do laundry for 4 days while I waited for anyone to avail themselves on the complainy chick’s behalf. but yesterday morning, my landlord showed up. he was wearing a nice suit and shoes that appeared to have been recently shined by one of the many women shoeshiners (sp?) along my street (apparently they still had to work). he gave me about a half an hour with limited water flow to wash dishes, take a shower. neither of which i did. it was a nice gesture before he turned the water off again so the plumber could come fix things. so the plumber banged away for a while, then he left. i walk out to see the landlord, in his nice clothes and shiny shoes, tiptoeing around, mopping my laundry area and cleaning the outside of my washing machine, ever so tenderly. so that was part of my day yesterday.

this vacation comes in the middle of ef’s winter course, a “beast” i had been conditioned to fear months prior to its commencement. so all the teachers at the school had prepared extensive lesson plans for the droves of new students said course would garner. the day comes and i have one new class with 2 new students in it. that’s it. ultimately, i worked less last week than i have the whole time i’ve been here.
i am reminded of a year ago in korea and our winter intensive session. 12 hour days, editing many an essay. drinking in gangnam and having to take the 5:00 am subway to make it back to work in time in the morning. group lunches at the japanese restaurant 2 storefronts away. judy eating seafood fried rice everyday. me eating number 23 every single day. the shrimp, tuna and salmon sashimi appallingly consistent. and i hated it all while I was in the middle of it—the inefficiency of my days, hours spent just waiting to leave, simply for the sake of everyone working the same 12 hours; the city itself and the lack of anything to do besides consume in various aspects (back to that thing about gluttony earlier. throw in some mindless shopping for good measure. i seem to recall having much more money to waste on pointless trifles); a general dissatisfaction with absolutely every aspect of my life. the irony is, with everything i think i hated about various stages of my life, in retrospect it’s quite easy to only consider the good bits. this is true of columbia, of austin, of columbia again, of suncheon, of ilsan. for each of those locales, there were things i hated enough to motivate a very physical separation from them, but it’s been maybe too easy to romanticize things as my [also] physical perspective has changed. at this point i will refrain from inserting any number of proverbial clichés, but I would be remiss not to mention that a number of them would lend themselves quite well to my ruminations. you heard it here: all my epiphanies are indeed wholly unoriginal.

on the flip side, i have this tendency to be nostalgic for things that aren’t even gone yet. what would you call that? pre-nostalgia? but the inevitable and impending fleetingness of these miniscule and/or arguably grandiose things makes me sad anyway. it’s a sadness that hovers so close to happiness. therein lies a big problem of mine: difficulty in separating the tragic from the beautiful, the mundane from the significant. prime example: the winding concrete path that leads to my apartment. there’s a row of scooters haphazardly parked on the left to denote the last bit of light i’m usually overtly granted. and so i shuffle slowly along, knowing precisely where the concrete raises and dips, where the ratty particle board covers one particularly depleted manhole. there’s usually just enough of a residual glow off of distant buildings, or the moon. and so the cold, ugly grey concrete of the daytime hours is transformed by this little bit of light that deigns to grace my path with its presence. and this is one of those things for which i’m already nostalgic. the montage of ugly concrete, particle board and the transformative nature of the moon.

but back to that winter course and my two new students. they’re starters, which basically means they’re very young and have little to no english language. I’m teaching them phonics and things from their coursebooks. I got to name one of the girls. she has been deemed cindy. I think it sounded relatively close to her chinese name. the other girl is katie. katie always has her hair in two pigtails crafted by someone with a poor grasp of fractions. besides the less than equal halves, one “tail” is always significantly higher than the other. at first, katie believed it was possible to practice the short ‘a’ sound while stuffing bits of chocolate muffin into her mouth. and who am I to dissuade that gumption? not a good multi-tasker myself… she eventually figured out that, contrary to various studies, chocolate muffins do not actually aid in speaking or language acquisition. and then we have cindy. cindy has a bit of a wonky eye. this eye waters and drips continuously. cindy adores me. i’ve never experienced such unfailing, unconditional love from a complete stranger before. and a chinese kid, to boot! cindy spent the majority of last week holding my hand and kissing it, while her wayward, wonky tears rolled down her face and onto my skin. so these two girls are pretty much amazing. and i get to teach them. so i don’t hate or fear ef’s winter course. not one bit.

probably other things to report, but i’m spent.

oh yeah, i'm reading a story about the unabomber from a collection of mcsweeney's stories. is that strange?

chinawood. unabridged.

chinawood. christmas party finished on a monday evening. had to deal with over 200 chinese men, women and children in a room with an extensive buffet (including a whole table of gummy treats). golden corral it wasn't.

in my chinese lonely planet, it actually mentions the fact that the whole concept of waiting in line really only made it's way to china about 10 years ago. mayhaps that seems ridiculous to people who've never been to china, but once you're here, the reality of that sets in. and it's still consistently shocking. so a room full of people who just paid a crap-ton of money for a christmas party, replete with buffet, has the very real potential for absolute chaos. but things went relatively smoothly. at any rate it eventually came to an end, which is all anyone wanted anyway. no more stupid dancing in lieu of actual work, no more logistics to become gross oversights.

ok, the party wasn't that bad, especially now that that was a full two weeks ago. makes complaining about the past tense shitty road trip that followed it seem sort of pointless, but i don't really care. the only way i'll feel better about my worst christmas ever is to complain about it. funny how that works...plus, i already alluded to it, so i have forced my own hand.

met bright and early monday morning at the school where there was a bus waiting to take the teachers and the sales staff of the school on a trip together. that immediately sounds like a good idea, particularly when it's been rocky with these chicks since the get go. thinly-veiled contempt and an ever-so-faux comraderie from both sides, based on gross conflicts of interest and delusions of grandeur ("i'm a chinese sales rep now, BUT.... i used to be a teacher.").

so after leaving later than planned, with some of the chicks missing the bus, the 3 hour bus ride to hengdian, aka chinawood, commenced. there was even a tour guide for us! there was even ktv/karaoke on the bus! and neither of these things were in english. so it was immediately apparent that this trip that had been "awarded" to us all for doing such a good job actually only served to alienate those peeps who were actually deserving of the sentiment behind the trip. it's always fun to realize early on in any endeavor that your role is that of pretense alone. cool! and then you spend the whole time being the person with the never-fun responsibility of "doing the right thing." i hate that role. where does that skewed sense of obligation come from? anyhoo...

after 3 hours of overt bus segregation, we arrived in hengdian. en route to the hotel i saw a whole, skinned dog hanging by its ankles (do dogs have ankles? what about cankles?) in front of a restaurant. just like in the real hollywood!!! i'm not easily shocked, and i've even been to restaurants that serve dog, but i've never actually seen something that graphic with my own eyes. and during my christmas vacation. that's the worst part. on any other day, seeing a skinned dog would have been cool, but during my christmas vacation it just seemed like a sacrilege. ted neeley wouldn't skin a dog! but teg nugent...different story.

the rest of the city was, metaphorically speaking, bombed out and depleted. and we were stuck here for the next 24 hours. the comic irony of all of this made itself known far far too early in the trip. which can only mean one thing: beer. lots and lots of beer.

so we arrive at the hotel and there's some issue with the fact that none of the foreigners have their passports. in china if you're a foreigner and you plan on staying in a hotel, bring your passport. however, as the trip had been arranged by our school (with the foreign staff in mind?), we assumed that accomodations had been covered. nope. so there was a glimmer of hope that we wouldn't be able to get a hotel because we were 8 foreigners with no passports, but no luck. damn.

eventually things worked out, so we checked into our room and took a brief breather. when we entered the hotel's adjacent restaurant about 15 minutes later, all the chinese staff had already started eating. we waited around for them to actually show up to begin the trip, but they couldn't wait for us to begin eating. so what did we do? we acted like complete children and sat at another table, pounding beers, making the gap between staff (and culture) even more obvious. so then it was the chinese staff's turn to pretend like it upset them. again with that pretense thing. great. hey, let's go to some tourist traps 'cause we're in fucking chinawood!

i guess chinawood is what the city's actually affectionately called. but the movie 'hero' was shot in some big reconstructed palace type thing there, along with some other movies featuring chinese actors that are sort of famous. forgive my apathy, but in order to get to all the arguably cool shit, we first had to go to this ghost town place that was just a copy of all the cool stuff that we could have seen in "real" china. the best part was the haunted house they use for some tv show. i don't even know how to describe it, but the lights were turned out and we were sprinkled with water. but it was scary water. i guess it's hard to be impressed or even startled by things nowadays, considering how advanced special effects have become. so this haunted house sort of felt like it had been created by a 15-year old. granted, a 15-year old who had a lot of free time on his/her hands...

i should put in a note about the face of tourism in china. it's that of a group. usually it involves some sort of prop to signify membership in this elite tourist bunch. we had little pins, but i saw many a bright orange hat floating around some of these places. so you wear your pins and you are herded like cattle to different stops along the same tourist route. and you don't get very much time to do anything. not only do i not want to be here, but i am constantly being told to hurry up. why even get off the bus?

after that we headed to some acrobats show. which was actually pretty cool. i'll attempt to upload video somewhere at some point. and that's something resembling a promise.

after drinking beers atop the fake great wall, hopped back on the bus and headed to the 'hero' movie set place. the scope was actually quite impressive. it looks like the real deal--sizewize and everything. where 'everything' includes a goat-drawn carriage ambling and bleating around the grounds. i think that's what gladiators used back in the day. you could also be lead around on a horse, bang on a drum (but they made the mistake of charging a foreigner in our group double. our tour guide chewed the drummaster a new asshole for that. also video footage of that that i will probably never manage to upload) and take pictures in old timey chinese clothes. just like at the lake of the ozarks!

we watched some strange 3-d movie thing and then hopped back on the bus to go back to the hotel and eat dinner. dinner meant the free meal that came with the hotel. same place we had lunch. no thanks. lunch was fine, but if you're in a city you'll probably never ever go to again in some remote chinese locale, do you really want to eat at the same restaurant twice? we didn't. it just seemed like a waste of valuable time we could have been exploring the city en route to some other restaurant. so we opted for hot pot and wandered around a bit getting there. played some drinking games at dinner which displayed some short and/or frayed tempers. just a frustrating day of being treated like children and thus acting the part.

after dinner we stumbled into a ktv place. it took a while to get set up, so we drank a lot. after some time waiting, rory declared: "I have to dance." rory dancing is always funny. i don't know how, but there are times when i manage to forget the early days of he and jules' courtship--80s night at shattered. and yeah, dancing machine. anyhoo, rory heads out into the main bar area where there's some sorry excuse for a dance floor (a little larger than a twister game mat) and starts sexing up the dude singing there. the guy gets off the floor and rory starts rolling around on the floor, losing his glasses for a second and ultimately making the entire day seem a lot better. that was some funny shit (*in shanghai, rory got up on the bar of some ex-pat drinkery and started dancing with one of the bartenders. it's just what he does...).

after that, made our way back to the hotel. then decided to do more ktv. i bailed out on that because we had to get up at the crack of dawn again the next day for another excruciating day of tourism.

so this brings us to christmas eve. if it doesn't really sound like a horrible christmas, just try to imagine spending 2 days with people you loathe and having no way to get out of it, add a freezing hotel in a dirt mcgirt town and that's what i was working with. dysfunctional families and associated psychodramas aside, this was the exact antithesis of christmas.

anyhoo, woke up early. some of the other, smarter foreigners (including jules and roar) had tried to get out of going to some village. two reasons for that: raining and late night ktv. so i went downstairs for my free breakfast at the hotel restaurant, but i didn't have some little piece of chinese paper that i apparently needed to get the meal. yet another oversight. i like free shit. one free breakfast could have potentially changed my entire attitude about the trip (which was also free, i should graciously note...). but no. that was also never mentioned to me. so no free breakfast. fuck me!

eventually the gang all congregated, because it was mandatory that we leave the hotel. so all the foreigners went to a "western style coffee house" while the chinese staff traveled on in the rain. the best part of this is that it's christmas eve, on our christmas trip (a christmas present), 2 days after our christmas party. again, christmas, a decidedly non-chinese holiday. so what does our tour bus do? it drops us off in front of the coffee shop that didn't open for another 15-20 minutes. in the rain. at 8 something in the morning. i guess the alternative was equally bad: sit and wait on a heated bus. with all those women. gross.

played pool in the rain (duh, there was a pool table set up on the sidewalk) until the coffee shop opened. the coffee shop proved to be the highlight of the trip. confined quarters with people who actually usually like each other, combined with copious amounts of food (sunny side up eggs, spam, bread came free with the coffee) and coffee. we stayed there for about 3 hours. i took a nap in a nice heated room and drank a beer with my coffee. because that's something i would do on christmas. and at least i had the luxury of 2 of my family members being there. anyhoo. this private room also happened to have a computer. at some point we were all mesmerized by a youtube clip of 2 midget kickboxers in thailand or cambodia or something. anyhoo, it was amazing. 9 people huddled around a computer at a coffee shop in some remote city in china, on christmas eve, united in midget kickboxing.

but the good times had to end at some point. and they did when the bus came to pick us up a few hours later. on to yiwu for shopping. i like the idea of shopping, but i don't necessarily like the reality so much. particularly being a larger chick in china. big feet. big body. doesn't bode well in the shopping realm. so we travel for about an hour and spend the majority of our allotted shopping time trying to find shit that doesn't suck. and we never found it. i could dwell on this more, but it was pretty similar to all shopping trips that suck, but this was just on a much bigger scale. they had shuttle buses to take people to different sections of this ginormo shopping compound.

that's all. my first christmas in china was colored by midgets and rage. both firmly planted in my memory.

worst christmas ever? (to be continued...)

i guess i should check the punctuation there. a question mark implies doubt, uncertainty (also the potential for some irony, but that's sort of lost since typing and/or reading yields nothing but other people's [perhaps slightly] skewed inner monologues, with none of the subtle nuances that only my speaking voice can provide). so yes, i am certain that this was the worst christmas ever.

imagine, if you will, that you work 5 days/week at a school in china. now imagine that you routinely work between 10-12 hours on each of those days. you don't mind this, actually. but what you do mind is spending so much time in the company of a handful of people for whom you have absolutely no respect or regard in general. i don't think i need to spend too much time differentiating the bad work apples from the good, as anyone reading this won't know what the fuck (or "who" the fuck, i should say) i'm talking about. but yeah, there are some retarded cunts that i work with. wow, i feel better.

sorry, back to this hypothetical situation that isn't actually hypothetical at all. we'll just call it my decidedly "subjective" christmas nightmare. anyway, back to that. for starters, no one died. that's not a bad thing. that's more a reminder to me that maybe all this fucking bullshit wasn't as bad as my melodrama will probably suggest.

my christmas started early, as i had an "open door" on sunday night. again with the "things that don't mean shit to people outside of ef." an open door means the parents of students in a particular class get to come and watch you teach their kids for about 20-25 minutes. 13 kids in this class. pretty low level. 8-9 being the average age. based on the body language of the parents alone, i could tell that i had some tough critics. for the next 30 minutes, i struggled through parents talking to their kids in chinese ("you don't understand") and touching their kids, while i was trying to convince their kids that there weren't any parents in the room and that they could understand. 13 Ss. 13 parents. makes for a crowded classroom. at the end of it all there were 3 mothers who were just nasty and had made up their minds to complain about anything. "the cd is too fast." "my kid doesn't understand you." "i don't understand you." "my kid just guesses what you mean by your body language." (*all translated by a chinese staff member). the best part was when a mother got upset about the fact that her kid did indeed write his lowercase i's correctly. she wasn't happy about the fact that she was wrong. i.e. she wasn't happy about the fact that her kid was writing exactly how he's supposed to. it's just funny because chinese has pinyin. plenty of i's there. there's not really an english i and a chinese i. or if there is, i wasn't aware of it. somebody educate me on that.

the point is, i had to hold back tears for damn near 20 minutes while a bunch of parents spoke vehemently (and nasally. that's not even the right word. i've yet to find the accurate adjective to describe the chinese language, particularly when spoken by a bunch of angry women debating the merits of their children's foreign english teacher. again, someone educate me on that one) against me in a language that i understand far less than korean. i heart long, inopportune parentheticals. just thought i'd share.

oh yeah, my gas is empty. that's not a metaphor, but it does contribute to my lack of holiday cheer. so i have no hot water. i haven't taken a shower in 4 days (soon to be 5). maybe this is information that i shouldn't divulge, but there's not really anyone around that i'm trying to impress by being, well, clean. i guess in the grand scheme of things 5 days isn't horrible (tibet=10 days, no shower). i'm sure that all the dirty people in far less-developed countries than the one in which i currently reside would agree with me there....the gas man cometh (tomorrow).

monday we had a huge christmas party at a fancy hotel. heaps of food and performances by the kids who had all paid an exorbitant amount of money to partake in both things. the worst part about that was that it was on my day off, but i still had to go spend time with the aforementioned assholes with whom i work. and instead of completing menial tasks that needed to be done, said cunts spent time dancing and/or applying copious amounts of makeup to prepare for the dance. i won't dwell too much on this, only to say that 1 of the 2 routines had absolutely nothing to do with christmas (which, as a westerner, i feel happy to grossly overvalue, as there are so very few western comforts around. and dammit, it is the most wonderful time of the year. i actually believe that.). their outfits were also completely inappropriate for a room full of children (a cold room, i might add). purple fringed halter tops and accompanying mini skirts. once, twice, three times a midriff exposed. gross. it was just strange to be surrounded by people who don't work as hard as i do, but who were more than happy to sit around on their asses at the party, eating western food (uhh, gummy sharks, anyone?) celebrating a holiday created, manipulated and thus cherished by the western world. the western world of which i'm a part, whether only in spirit and everything else about me other than mere geographic location.

so that was an all-day sort of a situation.

next day (my 2nd regular day off), had to be at the school at 7:30 am to go on a road trip to "chinawood." oh god. chinawood deserves it's own blog. and so it shall be....

spoiler alert

hmm. need to get back into the habit of this. it's just been hard to do since my home internet has been sporadic at best. rambling on and on in written form requires a certain degree of privacy, and i just don't seem to have that at work. not that i should expect to be able to do something non-work related whilst at my place of employment. makes sense, i suppose. but yes...work work work.

i should reckon long and hard about my current state of affairs. having said that, i've a feeling that this here blog is going to be an exercise in relative brevity by my standards (we'll judge the accuracy of this premonition by the word count at the end). i guess the main thing worth noting would be ef. it feels strange to be a cog in the wheel of such a huge machine.
seriously, wikipedia it. this is strange good for a majority of the time. except on sundays. sundays are the days when i feel like crying for no particular reason, but i guess there probably is a reason. the last day of my working week (mondays and tuesdays off) but in the grand scheme of things, this is an improvement. in korea i had at least 3 days/week that were like that, particularly in the latter months of my tenure there. that sounds very official. tenure. of course there are also jules and rory at ef, which changes everything for the better. living at work doesn't seem so miserable when you put it in the context of working with two of your favorite people. in fucking china. yeah, that's cool. so in that respect it was easier to be unhappy when it went unnoticed in korea (due to a palpable lack of friendly-type beings with whom to have regular discourse).

besides all the other glaring/obvious differences between the china and korea, the biggest one for me has been on the emotional front (yup, here she goes... i'm even going to contradict prior statements. i like to keep me on me's toes). constantly being in the company of people who just might give a shit about me means it's not quite as easy to lie about how i'm feeling, so as to spare them the sympathy/empathy (genuine or otherwise) they feel is due. sure, i did that a lot in korea (the wallowing and whatnot), it just so happened that i was alone most of the time. there was a lot less accountability for how i was feeling. crying willy nilly with no regard for how it affected others. simply because there was no way it could have. so even though i try to explain that things here are so much better than they were in korea, there weren't any actual humans who have been in both places with me for the past two years who can validate/corroborate that statement. no litmus test, as it were.

it feels sort of strange to admit that i'm not a chipper person. even stranger to realize that i'm okay with that. since i'm working out some "issues" here, i'll elaborate. what's puzzling me now is trying to recall if i've ever actually been deserving of any happy-go-lucky type qualifiers. or have i always been this sort of overly emotional chick who spends a good portion of her time (or at least more time than most normal humans) teetering on the verge of tears? i guess it doesn't really matter either way. it is worth noting that my tears are not always the result of depression or any other sort of hostile personality clouder. hmmm.

enough about that though...the other day there was a camel on the sidewalk. as if the fact that i have to enter a police precinct to actually get to my apartment building--the very epitome of communist chinese housing--isn't enough. of course i say my apartment's the epitome of something of which i had no prior notion. that's how i roll. but my "complex" is big (don't read into that, even though i wrapped it in quotes...) and concrete and has lots of palm trees. yup, the very image of communism. so yeah, across from the police entrance is a kindergarten, which is why i can only assume that's why there was a real, live camel hanging out on the sidewalk. kids and camels. just like metal and...magnets. i didn't take a picture with/of it, because somehow it only struck me as something odd enough to notice, but not odd enough to involve myself with beyond that.

besides the camel, there's really not much to report. oh yeah, i've been reading a lot. i say a lot, simply because it's the only thing i've really done consistently outside of work, besides drink. usually this "reading" involves going to starbucks (yeah, i know...evil). i figure that if i'm ever going to meet hot foreign dudes to "talk to" that aren't affiliated with my school, this most archetypal of western coffee chains is a good place to start. so far my quests have proven less than fruitful, as far as dude-scoping goes. if actual reading had ever been the point, then yes, i've "totally scored" on that front. fuck, heavy on the quotes today. finished a few books. the last of which was beneath the wheel. herman hesse. i think that i can safely say i have his whole story arc figured out: "i think i'll kill the main character, now that the reader has gotten good and attached to him." anyhoo, having read a few of his books now (most of which i [surprisingly] remember. sorry, siddhartha...), i'd have to say that the glass bead game is the bee's knees. i'm not exactly sure why i've dedicated a whole paragraph to a shoddy book report, but hey, why not.

fuck, i turned 30. in china. that seems noteworthy on two counts. hey, i ain't dead! hey, i live in china! make it three: hey, jules is here! she cooked chili at her crib. lots of folks came over, circle of death ensued. although we ditched the game early to depart for ktv. i say ktv like it should mean something to anyone outside of china. ktv's akin to karaoke, except you can sing in your own private room. it's sort of what we do around these parts. so yup. ktv and chili. east meets west. i guess east met west, since that was last week.

i have nothing else to say at this juncture. i must sleep and mentally prepare myself for early morning munchkins. there's a little dude in my first class (joey) who confuses /t/ and /k/. so instead of saying "it's a snake" he says "it's a snate." he's still convinced that pronouncing loudly means pronouncing more correcter. and with that heart-warming anecdote, i'm spent.

oh shit, about that dream i mentioned in the last post...there's really not much more worth mentioning. manute bol sums it up.

a heads up

look out, world. today marks the triumphant return of home internet, after nearly 6 months of abstinence.

it also marks the purchase of a dvd player, so my attention's divided.

at some point i'll need to talk about a dream i had last night that involved a person that i think was manute bol, a lobster, a dinosaur, some terrorists and a giant net. but i don't want to spoil it before i can offer more details. in due time...

oh yeah, i forgot

i mistakenly posted my photo update to the old korean blog.

'nam photos are up:
www.flickr.com/photos/jamieleighmcgeorge

word.

making up for lost time

an untimely recap of my last week in vietnam. that was over 1 month ago. weird. and now i "live" in china. equally weird. i actually signed a contract on my new apartment yesterday, which, strangely enough, reminds me of exactly the kind of place in which i'd have dwelled in columbia, mo. the perfect little crappy/charming post-dorm life abode. and it has a backyard. bbqs, beer consumption and general merriment shall ensue. this is unheard of round these parts (the yard, not the merriment). i'm muy stoked. visions of unpacking my clothes that had seemed like faraway dreams are now a more than slightly-wrinkled reality.

but back to the last week in 'nam. in short, it ruled. in long...my last full day in sapa consisted of a 7 km mountain trek--uphill, mind you--through a typhoon-ravaged village. strange to be walking over ginormo mud clumps dotted by random upturned grass and the occassional roof bit or beam. "shit, that was someone's dwelling." very real manifestations of how weather/nature can destroy things. i'm lucky to have only ever experienced weather as an inconvenience. being in vietnam was the first time it ever struck me just how powerful mere water droplets falling out of the sky can be. i think i realized that the first time i had to walk home from class down one of the busiest streets in the city in water up to my knees. it was pleasant--one of those distinctly vietnamese moments--but also unsettling in just how quickly the water accumulated. but enough about that.

prior to afrorementioned mud clumps, there were other pleasantries to be had, namely banana pancakes and an early morning swim in a waterfall near the banho village. i'd stayed the night in a bamboo stilt house with a local family of tay minority people. at our dinner table of 10 peeps, i was the only "tourist." sleeping in the same house as some locals seemed to satiate this warped desire for "authenticity." and what is that exactly, authenticity? some [relatively] abstract notion that has managed to saturate my brain during this grand asian adventure known as my life (a notion that i seem to associate with skewed senses of clarity and purity--huh?--along with other equally intangible things that i'll never be able to succinctly or thoroughly explain).

so, uh, yeah. dinner. my guide was a fantastic human, despite his drunken sexual advances later that same evening. so he translated everything for me. he also shared his coagulated duck blood pudding. not something i'd choose for myself, but hey, i tried it. and now i can say i did. it was really nice to sit back and see this large family unit interact, much in the same way large family units everywhere interact. and i felt happy and sad at the same time. hard to explain. the inherent tragedy of life-changing events (the good kind) when you're lucid enough to realize you're in the middle of them. the very transitoriness that makes these moments/hours/days in time so profound. and then it's back to your regular life, and work and obligations and less-than-stellar relationships with most people. ho hum.

moving on to the ascent. saw many an errant water buffalo, along with brightly-clad mountain women and giddy, muddy children picking crab apples when i finally made it to the top of this mountain after sweating my proverbial balls off, i drank a beer in a hut with the crappiest karaoke setup out in the middle of nowhere. but i guess in context, it could arguably have been the best karaoke setup i've ever seen. hmmm...

post-karaoke, had to get back to the main village. and the only way to do that was via motorcycle taxi, my favorite aspect of vietnam. so back over/through the waterfalls and landslides and to the arguably plush hotel i'd been to on the first day. vietnam was a study in contrasts for me. the trip began with the mental taxation and stress of the celta course and ended with the physical exhaustion of my person. and both were equally rewarding. the sort of balance that i sometimes fail to realize i need. i guess not in genuinely exhausting doses, but whether in academics or in physical exertion, it's always nice to realize exactly what you're capable of.

back to this increasingly roundabout travelogue....sapa was at the top of my list while i was still loafing on jules and rory's couch back in july, so it was quite literally amazing to actually be there after all the issues i'd been having with my chinese visa whilst in the 'nam. so i flew to hanoi on a friday afternoon (the second time i'd flown there in 2 weeks. that was some fucking poor planning).

as soon as i got to a random travel agent's office planted down some little back alley in hanoi, i was promptly picked up and deposited at the train station.

i arrived at about 7:45 am in lao cai where it was dumping rain. remember back in an earlier paragraph when i mentioned a typhoon or some other natural disaster? this was the only thought running through my head as i struggled to stay dry. weather had never made me nervous before. ultimately it didn't matter. we tourists were ushered to a vanthat then drove us the 30 km or so to sapa.

sapa used to be significantly less of a tourist trap, but apparently a whole lot of people had the same great idea as me to come to this place. resorts and "pubs" practically popping up overnight, all founded on the intrigue of getting to see local people who come downfrom the hills to sell their traditional wares and give us rich tourists a glimpse of "real" vietnamese culture. it's very cool, but it also seemed to sum up most of vietnam. yes, i know there's plenty of tragic history here that i could touch upon that's about as "real" as you can get, but i'm focusing on my own selfish wants and desires as a tourist.

6 hours of hiking on the first day, uphill, downhill. i think it was about 12-15 kms that day. and all these ethnic women with their braids and their colorful weaving and their large jewelry and their blue-stained hands swarm you--down from the mountain in droves--selling silver, selling handmade bags, selling scarfs. and the setting was unlike anything i've ever seen. a sea of green punctuated by terraced rows of rice. and the fog threading about the landscape only heightened this sense of utter unreality.

the easy trekking was the very basic part of the tour. after lunch on that first day, 7 other people from our group of 9 went back to the hotel. me and one other chick had opted for the homestay in one of the neighboring villages. so we walked there and got to take the coldest showers of our lives. we slept upstairs on mosquito-net shaded mattresses. then we wandered random village trails.

dinner time meant "happy water," which is the 60% rice wine that the homeowner had made, from the rice he'd cultivated with his own hands. good gad. not easy to drink. it was drinking so much of the happy water that led linda and i to sing karaoke (yes, in the village). it was quite expensive because apparently, electricity in a village is really expensive. makes sense, i guess.

woke up in the morning to a variety of noises--all the sounds of a village waking up. ducks, chickens, roosters, cats, and the wailing of one unfortunate pig. i was mildly disappointed that i didn't witness a pig slaughter, but apparently this old girl wasn't quite fat enough. the farmer was just weighing her and lifted her by one ear and her tail.. i'm quite certain i would make such sounds too if some vietnamese villager were hoisting me by my two flimsiest body parts (yes, i have a tail). ultimately the pig seemed pleased with her outcome.

day 2 was perhaps the most dangerous, on account of all the prior rain. it was downhillfor half the day. couldn't have done it without the help of the ethnic people. how very strange to be hiking through bamboo forests with tribal women flanking you, holding your hands as you descend a cliff face. eventually we parted ways, but i felt that the least i could do was buy some of these women's handicrafts. the next part of the of the way was uphill, but i much preferred that to going downhill.

after a ramen lunch, linda headed back to sapa, and my guide and i began the trek down to banho (where this summary started). immediately after arriving at the stilt house in the village, the guide and i went to some hot springs near the village, no other people in sight. headed back to the house in time for dinner.i guess that's pretty much it. hiked back up the mountain, went back into town and back to the hotel. headed to the train station the next evening. my guide met me there and got me good and drunk with the locals before i settled in for the 10 hour journey back to hanoi. i splurged on a $25/night hotel and slept all day. back to china the next day.

and here i am. and despite how hectic this first month has been, i'm still in a good mood. that warrants a "holy shit!."

schtuff

well hell's bells. i am now living in china. always good to start any new life abroad with a visit to the hospital. once, twice, three times a lady. 3 times in 2 days. i don't have the hiv or nothing. in fact, i still don't know exactly what i had, but it was a shits-producing, stomach cramping, brain-bludgeoning thing. what's important is that it's no longer in my possession, whatever "it" was.
worth noting that the "jiaxing first hospital" fell far far short of clean. which begs the question, was it only first in materialization? or is there some other area in which it bests other hospitals. i've gotta go with the former, as this place was a study in irony, fecal coliforms and a general lack of efficiency that i've come to expect from anything large, asian and resembling an office.

let's see...things of note: people smoking in the oncology ward (which also happened to be full of freshly squirted out babies). perhaps the most memorable event of the day (not that i would choose to remember this) was when i had the misfortune of supplying a "stool" sample. there are two words i hope never to encounter first hand again. i'll go ahead and laugh politely at any foul puns that arise out of that.

anyhoo, a nurse accompanied me through the labyrinthine corrider of hospital trailers. this was also shocking--sort of like in elementary school when the school outgrows the main building and teachers are relocated to these lego-type add on trailers. jiaxing first hospital was the exact same way. so the doctors i saw didn't even get to be in the main building. i wonder if that bothers them. "yeah, we MADE space for the real life savers and important people inside."

back to that pesky stool...first i had to get to these elusive doctors in their lego huts and produce a stool sample in a bathroom whose corrider was full of people laying around with "infusions" dangling out of their arms. unfortunately, the lab that needed my shit was actually in the main building. which meant navigating the labyrinth and the corrider of iv laden peeps again, little cup o' stool in hand. i probably would have been embarrassed if i'd had enough energy to concern myself with anything besides not splashing my own shit on myself in full view of a very busy hospital. yes, i said "splash." it's been that kind of month.

got to the lab window, where people were butting and jostling, just like they do everywhere else in china. then i noticed that these other people had brought their own stool samples from home--little, pink plastic bags and bright papers crunched up like christmas packages, then opened to reveal the treat within. christmas packages of smeared human feces. the old timer in front of me had taken a particularly tar-like b.m., which he was altogether too eager to get through the window of the lab. "i produced this for you. i even brought it from my abode. you may now graciously accept my gift."

other than that, not too much to report in the way of hospitals. i got my blood drawn by a woman who didn't change her latex gloves beforehand, although she did give them a healthy dose of what i gathered to be hand sanitizer. isn't that the point of latex gloves? that you can throw them away after use? also got an infusion. not sure what all the hype is about that. waited 4 hours in an unconditioned, smoking-permitted waiting room to have a doctor tap on my knees with the magical reflex wand. that was a mite frustrating.

so that was my hospital experience. i hope i never have to go back.

other things....adjusting to actually working again. it's strange to have technically been "off" for 2 months. it's the longest amount of time i've ever gone without income. so the fact that i'm not totally destitute right now is really sort of a head scratcher for me. how'd that work out? i paid for this expensive course in vietnam. ate 3 meals a day. drank a veritable shitton o' alcohol. traveled around (including gratuitous domestic flights. gratuitous unnecessary, not gratuitous free). wanted for nothing, and now i still have money and didn't put anything on a credit card. it's a little bizarre, and more than slightly out of character for me.

right now it's more than slightly daunting to work at my school. and that piece of paper that i worked so hard for (CELTA) didn't really prepare me at all for lower level kids and issues of classroom management. i can't wait for a month from now or 2 months from now when i've worked out the kinks and feel comfortable in my teaching skin again. i guess i should specify--my child-teaching skin again. still, in korea i had no structure and here i do. also random observations by my peers, my sister and the other bossman. the first month will be stressful, but after that i'm looking forward to otehr people actually holding me accountable for my actions and requiring something of me as both a teacher and a human.

at some point i'll have to write about my last week in vietnam--sapa. that'll have to be an uber-mega long post though, and i'm honestly not sure when i'll actually have the time to type that.

oh yeah, i get a 6 day vacation starting on saturday. isn't that crazy? i'll have worked for 2 weeks and then i get paid vacation. going back up to weihai, where jules and rory first lived in china. midgets, baijo, beaches and whatnot.

trekking near sapa, northern vietnam

trekking to banho village. near sapa, northern vietnam.

the time has come for halong bay bloggage

i'll let out a preemptive "good gad." that about sums up the whole excursion. i will also save the suspense and go ahead and dispense the valuable lesson i've learned over these past few weeks: i don't play well with others. i should have learned from my european vacation of yore that i don't like traveling in "packs." anyhoo...

first things first. booked the halong bay trip through the frat house of a hostel i was staying at with the other 2 ladies from my celta course.

i really really liked both of these girls while we were studying together, and i still like them, even if i haven't talked to them for a while, but i think after the near week of "togetherness" there was sort of a mutual avoidance. i hate that it came to that, but i should have exercised more caution in agreeing to travel with 2 chicks with significantly different traveling agendas than my own. only because i know how i am in these situations. would have been better for all of us if they'd traveled together and i'd traveled...together with myself? i dunno. but it was my own fault. seems to be a pattern in my life though, close quarters leading to less-friendly terms--roommates, traveling buddies, etc...anyhoo, from now on, only traveling alone or with people who have no choice but to like me (close relatives, bound by unconditional love and other bullshit like that).

a note about this particular hostel in hanoi. they have a downstairs bar and a rooftop bar, so drinking is inherently involved. i've stayed in plenty of hostels in the past (europe, japan, the states) and none of them has been as intent on "partying hard" as the one in hanoi has been. which is okay, i guess, but by the end of the week in hanoi, i never wanted to stay in a hostel again. i also had never been so acutely aware of my age. i felt old, or at least extremely "mature." the hostel felt like the setting for the tv show temptation island, where everyone is trying to hook up the whole time. which is okay if that's what you're looking for (this is my attempt at trying to sound less judgmental).

at 8 am on a thursday morning, a group of traveling folk assembled in front of the hostel to embark on our halong bay journey. i believe there were 28 people total, some of whom were along for 2 days, the rest for 3 days (i was one of the latter). we were also introduced to our uber-enthusiastic guide, stacey. he was a brit and he liked to drink. a lot. case in point, by 10 am on the bus, our fearless ringleader had led the bus to consume 2 bottles of vodka and 1 bottle of whiskey. the whole time he was gyrating, shirtless and sweaty, to a shitty techno/pop soundtrack provided by one of the many germans on the bus.

so what do you do when you realize you're stuck in exactly the nightmare you predicted--i.e. you're at a frat party that's out in the middle of nowhere and you have no ride home? that's the question i found myself pondering about 5 minutes into the trip. and i really had no choice but to grin and bear it. i hate doing that. all it does is foster contempt for everyone around me.
so yeah, 3 days of being surrounded by mostly people that you have absolutely nothing in common with sucks balls. i should note here that the people themselves were okay, but again, we just had different agendas. of course i like to drink, but i don't like being forced to party. i didn't know i'd signed up for a booze cruise/singles party (though i had that sinking suspicion as i handed over my money). anyhoo, it was at this point that i thought "i told you so." knowing that i had been right all along did not make me feel better.

eventually we make it to the boat and everything was fine, and the scenery was actually quite beautiful. halong bay itself is pristine--limestone cliffs dramatically jutting out of the water. it was sort of strange though, while we were kayaking through these caves around the cliffs, all i could think about was how similar a lot of it looked to missouri. gots to love that karst topography. i think i even dropped the word "crinoid" but i was the only person interested in missouri's state fossil. go figure. of all the useless, unimpressive information i could retain, i've decided to keep "crinoid" in my brain.

later that night, post-kayaking excursion and swimming amidst rampant jellyfish, ate on the boat and were given keys to our rooms on the boat. that was pretty cool. i'm trying to remember if i've ever slept on a boat before in an actual bed. pretty sure this was the first time. i figured the two chicks i was with would want to room together, as they'd already done lots of bonding in the days prior while i wandered haplessly around hanoi. so i paired up with a scottish nurse named bernie. she was lovely. and that's a word i never use.

most people stayed up late playing drinking games. i went to sleep early-ish. beer on the boat was sort of expensive, (and by expensive i mean $1.50/can. ha.) so i wasn't really too keen on drinking a lot. plenty of other people picked up the slack and got retardedly drunk and naked. it was fun to hear their goings on at 5 am.

got up early for breakfast on the boat. after that the 2 day tourists left, which meant that the young, irish girls were gone, so the germans had to repeat all their mating rituals with the scraps left on the boat for one more day. i think it was actually before noon when someone did the "helicopter" before skinnydipping in the bay. that's not a pleasant thing to see in profile.
we all went kayaking and swimming again. this was actually sort of funny. this fleet of kayaks paddled up to a beach where there was already a boat. we start disembarking and notice that there's one table romantically set for two on the beach. some couple had planned their private getaway on a very public beach. so we just said sorry and raided their romance.

of our group, 2 people had signed up to do the rock climbing part of the package (an extra $40). so we made our way to the little rockclimbing island. this was where i slept in a hammock for approximately 2 hours. that could have been one of the best naps i've ever taken in my life: hammock, island, palm tree, beautiful rock climber bodies to look at should i choose to wake up. which i did. rock climbing looks like something i'll never ever be able to do.

anyhoo, after that we made our way to cat ba island, where we would dine and sleep for the night. my lovely roommate from the night before was one of the 2 day peeps, so i was the odd chick out. ultimately one of the chicks who was hooking up with a german decided to room with him, so i got stuck with her uber-complainy (and totally immodest) friend. good times. cat ba island was actually the highlight though. it was nice to actually interact with some of these partiers during dinner after i'd already judged them so harshly (see, i'm admitting some sort of guilt here. that's a good thing! i'm not too proud to admit i judge too harshly). so that was cool.
after dinner we headed to a karaoke bar. that's where all the good vibes from dinner suddenly disappeared. damn. back to the nightmare. i hated norae bongs in korea, so i still hate them, even in a different country in a different form. but this is where vietnamese rice wine (60% alcohol if you drink the clear shit) came into the picture. yikes. my shot-taking face is not pretty.

after the rice wine the very very attractive rock climbing guide from earlier in the day (with the cool name of onslo) came to the bar. party animal/guide extraordinaire, stacey, decided he would try to physically pour rice wine into this guy's mouth. mr. rock climber man was having none of it. stacey asked him what his problem was, and i believe i chimed in, "dude, his body's a temple." that seemed to be enough to stop stacey and to impress rock climber man. i made small talk with the rock climber man, then he said he had to leave because he was jet-lagged. fair enough.

5 minutes later i noticed that he was still there. i guess i looked sort of bored, so he asked what i thought of the bar. when i described it as "hellish" he invited me to another bar with him. hells yeah! i seem to remember him saying that a girl who looked so bored at a place like that bar was the kind of person he wanted to hang out with. hallelujah!

so he said we could take his bike. i was assuming that a big, strapping man like him meant a motorcycle. but no, he actually meant a small, one speed bicycle. so i hopped on the back and he pedaled me uphill to another bar. i was impressed by this small show of chivalry. funny shit. not sure if it was at this point or later when i returned to that bar that i rode up and down the street on this bicycle while he said goodbyes to people inside. anyhoo, i hadn't ridden a bicycle in a very long time, so it was really fun to zoom up and down these dark streets on a relatively remote island in vietnam.

so we go to the top of this hotel restaurant/bar, and it's just me, him and his two vietnamese friends, sitting on a patio, looking out over the bay/gulf and drinking beers. no karaoke. no rice wine. no music whatsover. but there were rats scurrying around the dark restaurant. and it didn't strike me as gross, it just seemed to add to the understated and perfect atmosphere of the whole place, in sharp contrast to the tackiness of other locales i'd found myself in on this trip.
it was so nice to just banter with another human, or "volley" as he said. he wasn't hitting on me or making me feel uncomfortable, like i've grown accustomed to in asia. sure, he was a hot dude, and i wouldn't have minded one bit if he had been hitting on me, but it was so much better that he wasn't. every once in a while i get to meet people that i have a very natural connection with (again, not talking about romance, though that's been in there before too, on even rarer occassions), and it's nice to be reminded that i can indeed carry on a witty, intelligent conversation with someone i've just met.

oddly enough, the more i travel, the more i realize i have very little in common with most people. so if i can find common ground with someone without having to compromise myself in any way, that's a rare treat. this goes back to my earlier statement that i "don't play well with others." what others may view as fleeting and innocuous conversations carry so much weight to me. the idea that on this planet there are complete strangers who actually are a lot like me. i've lamented before my woeful unrelatability. the times when this well-known [near] fact is contested comprise the very marrow of all my travels. and they are infrequent. and they are these hallowed things to me.

so yeah. the highlight of my trip to halong bay/hanoi for sure. maybe even the highlight of my trip to vietnam (aside from passing the celta, but that feels like ancient history now).
after drinks we walked back to the other bar so i could figure out how to get back to the hotel. and that was it. said goodbyes, shook hands. after that i went nightswimming (partially neked, such a hypocrite!) on an idyllic beach remarkably close to my hotel. there were about 20-30 meters of just sand before you hit any waves. it was absolutely beautiful. a very nice coda to the day and to the trip, aside from the amorous advances of two dudes from the boat. fellas, keep your penises away from me. not interested and/or desperate enough. at least not yet...

next day headed back to halong bay and then back onto the bus. significantly less hard liquor consumed on the way back to hanoi. but the beer was flowing. let's just say that 1 of the girls i was traveling with was downright trashed at 5 in the afternoon.

flew out of hanoi and i was so fucking relieved to be away from that hostel. traveling alone now. went to the mekong delta earlier this week. finally procured a fucking chinese visa (today!!!!!). heading to hanoi (again) in a few hours. once i get there, i'm immediately ushered to the overnight train to sapa, where i'll spend 5 nights/4 days trekking in the mountains/hill country of northern vietnam:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa_Pa

this is what i wanted to do before i was even in this country. so it should be a nice note to leave on, especially since my time here has been very stressful and largely uneventful. thanks for that, chinese embassy.

arise chicken. chicken arise.

was woken up about a week and a half ago by what appeared to be a marching band. this was at 4:55 am. so i stumbled outside in the pre-dawn haze and realized that it really was a band, not a marching one, but a band nonetheless. and they were playing directly below my window. no, it wasn't some sort of lovely and skewed vietnamese serenade to rouse me from my beauty sleep, i think it was a wake. so, sort of appropriate that i "awoke" to it. okay, bad pun.

there were lots of tiny men with large brass instruments huddled around an alley shop front. it was very strange to see this man in what looked like a boy scout's uniform, with a trombone bigger than he was. they also sang some songs--remarkably akin to irish drinking songs--while they played. very cool. very strange. in the shop front were monks, candles and incense surrounding a makeshift altar on a tiny plastic stool (the same ones at the 'bia hoi' draft beer places sprinkled throughout the city) with a person's face in a frame. of course, tourist that i am, i had my camera at the ready. but some of the vietnamese people around told me "no pictures." apparently i wasn't the only ex-pat woken up, but i am the only one who heeded the explicit instructions of mr. monk man.

i went to a few touristy places last week while i was still in ho chi minh city. it was nice to do something besides kill time and drink beer. went to the war remnants museum and was made to feel adequately shitty by lots of graphic pictures of the war crimes and brutality of american soldiers in vietnam. great! a real downer. but there was also this feeling that i didn't feel quite bad enough. because as clear as the horror of that particular war was, war in just a fact. there can be rules and conventions and things like that, but it's never nice, nor is it pretty. the reality of the near apathy yielded by this dismal fact was more depressing than any photo documentation testifying to this specific war in which my country was the bad guy.

oh yeah, and it was very surreal to be surrounded by these horrific photos of janky-limbed agent orange victims and beheaded civilians, and all the while tourists from all over the globe were posing for pictures with these images, smiling nonchalantly and waving hollow peace signs. it seemed rather cruel to head outside and pose with tanks and helicopters afterward. went to the jade emperor pagoda next. it's a temple for both buddhism and daoism, which i thought was very cool. i took a ridiculous amount of photographs there. most of the temples i've been in before (i'm speaking mostly about tibet) don't allow photos or charge a lot of money for you to take them, so i didn't have many pictures of the inside of actual functional temples. now i do.

other two chicks opted out after this, but i hopped on a motorcycle taxi and headed to another temple, famed for its golden buddha. there was no one there, and just this huge room with, you guessed it, a golden buddha. there were some monks hanging out, washing their clothes, but other than that it was just me (and buddha) in this yuge hall. so i wandered around the grounds for a little bit and stumbled upon a little artists' wing of the temple. there were people in what appeared to be a library wrapping lots of packages of framed caligraphy painting. it was the workshop of some famous vietnamese artist and they welcomed me in to watch what they were doing. i communicated roughly with one of the women who was studying under this other much-accomplished artist. so she explained what many of the pictures meant and then volunteered the artist's services to make me some scrolls for my parents. he made me two of those (which i paid for) and then two more that he just gave me. it was a great, serendipitous chunk of time in an otherwise lackluster day. yes, i said serendipitous. i hate that word.

i just got back from hanoi. seems a lot different from ho chi minh city, in both tangible and intangible ways. people seem a lot friendlier in ho chi minh city. also seemed to rip you off a lot less. haggling for absolutely everything gets really fucking old after a while. a nice precursor to my impending daily life in china. i guess that whether i realize/admit it or not, i have sort of settled in in ho chi minh city. also, the bars close later. not that that's a valid point to hold against hanoi, just an observation.

spent 3 hours on monday morning last week in line at the chinese embassy in hanoi. that was a fucking nightmare. felt a wee bit claustrophobic, and got manhandled by a bald-headed she monk who acted like she was trying to get front row at a [insert now defunct classic rock band name] concert. i would have thought that showing up at the chinese embassy in your monk getup would be a no no, but i guess not. anyhoo, in 3 hours i think about 20 people entered and exited the actual building. the rest of us were made to wait outside in some sort of holding pen area. so at lunchtime i had no choice but to leave, having accomplished absolutely nothing. i'll just have to wait until tomorrow to try to figure this shit out at the embassy in saigon. i already went there once 2 weeks ago and it was a breeze. fingers crossed that everything works out. sort of ridiculous how the chinese governement requires you to have your round-trip tickets paid for and confirmed, but then they make it so fucking difficult to be able to actually use them.

because i thought i had to go the embassy last monday, i missed out on a trip to sapa that left from my hostel /frat house on sunday night. the other two chicks i'm traveling with got to go on that trip, so i did a little sight-seeing last monday afternoon after the bunk embassy trip--went to a pagoda, a temple and a water puppets show. the water puppets show was just okay, but it's nice to be able to say that i did it. the music was very cool though. there's some instrument called a "danbo" that is traditionally played by men, but at our show it was sposed to be impressive that we had a female danbo player. all in all a solid day of touristy activities. trying to make sure i pepper my waning days in vietnam with this sort of shit. and i say "shit" with the best intentions. it's just too hot to actually enjoy myself thoroughly. all i want to do is stay in my air conditioned hotel and watch general hospital. yup, that's actually on tv here.

did some other fun things while i was in hanoi. some better than others. that will probably be a future blog.

on tuesday i got up early to head to the perfume pagoda. let's just say that "dysentery" (how kind a term) is not a nice addition to a 2 hour bus trip and then a 1 hour boat trip. so everyone else got to eat this great lunch and hike up a mountain, while i was just trying very hard not to shit my pants. good eats. i headed to the bathroom once and i saw little chicken legs sticking out from under this wall, twitching with their last attempts at life. so i guess it's really not too much of a shame that i didn't get to partake in the consumption of said chicken. the pagoda itself probably warrants more description. let's see...

there were 6 people actually in the tour group--3 vietnamese (one of whom lives in belgium), 2 english, 1 me. it was nice to be part of a smaller group tour. less waiting for people. also nice to be away from people at the hostel, as that wasn't exactly my kind of place anyway. side note: staying at this particular hostel in hanoi made me painfully conscious of my age. or maybe less conscious of my age and more conscious of how much liquor and promiscuity color the lives of the average early 20 year old. so yeah, that's how the hostel was like a frat party. i hate to judge these goings on, but if it's not you're scene and you're stuck in it, there's really no other coping recourse. i like to drink just like everyone else, but i hate how much of a singles party my whole hanoi trip was. designed for people to hook up, like big brother or some other shitty reality show. moving on...

arrived in a city somewhere after a two hour scenic bus ride through rural vietnam--rice paddies, water lilies, locals, oh my! i'm definitely not a city mouse, i've realized. i generally don't like most people, so if you remove a significant chunk of them from my daily equation, i'm far far happier.

hopped in the vietnamese version of a canoe (this one sat 5 peeps though) and we were all rowed for about 1 hour by a woman who must have been pushing 60. the whole time you're in the boat, other women with coolers and the archetypal vietnamese conical hat sidle up next to you hocking their wares--hats, beer, coca cola, etc.

eventually we docked at the base of a small mountain. it was at this dock that i saw a large jug of alcohol with dead birds in it. funny that it was surrounded by other equally large jars full of snakes and lizards, but those already seemed like old news to me. the birds piqued my curiosity, to say the least. after a small bit of hiking, we came to a cable car up the mountain. i've been on plenty of cable cars, but this one was definitely the longest. it was weird too, when we got off there were all these large german shepherds lazing around. i dunno from whence they came (uh, germany?), but it was very odd to see them dotting the trail up to the pagoda, along with a monkey on a chain (nope, not a metaphor) and lots of chickens. eventually we made it to the gate of the pagoda, where the descent into the cave commenced. from the mouth of the cave, incense smoke and the muddled voices of tourists and worshippers wafted up, punctuating the mid-day heat with an eerie, ghostlike sanctity. in the cave, small groups of people carried trays of offerings to the various altars. to underestimate, as i tend to do, the whole thing was "pretty cool."

got home from this day trip and realized that my all-girl room at the hostel had morphed into a dude pen in the 8 hours that i'd been gone that day. i walked in and the place just fucking reeked of cologne. strange to be the only girl in an 8 bed room. the nice malaysian man i met suggested that i move to the top bunk, you know, to avoid gang rape and whatnot. i stayed put. no rape. whew. don't necessarily need to add that to the list of traveling accomplishments. the next day i headed to halong bay, home of tia carrera's character in wayne's world: "i was born in halong bay!" yup, that's all i can think about. halong bay will require its own blog. it was just that good and bad together.

heading back to china on september 11th. i honestly can't wait. sick of vietnam. sick of living out of a suitcase. sick of compromising travel plans. i want to be settled and back to hanging with my homies (all 2 of them).

anyhoo, this is all for now. sure i'll acquire more travel stories and come up with some sort of summarizing assessment of how traveling in vietnam made me "feel." i'm nothing if not consistent/predictable.

'nam

sort of difficult to begin to compose a blog after such a long hiatus. which is not to say there's nothing to report. i'm in ho chi minh city, for fuck's sake, there's too much to report. okay, that's a small lie too, i've been way too busy to initiate (or even partake in) much debauchery. but i have the rest of my life to make up for that. starting tonight! rugby games=broken bottles and knife fights. if i'm wrong on this, please don't crush my dreams by correcting me.

yesterday was the last day of my CELTA course here in ho chi minh city. hard to describe what the whole experience was like. it was simultaneously excruciatingly difficult and bearable. there were the obvious issues of time management and attempting to muster up the focus required of being a student again (albeit only for a month). but perhaps the most difficult thing about all of it was being surrounded by lots o' people that i have absolutely nothing in common with. sure, we're all taking this teaching course together so some strange force of nature brought us all together in ho chi minh city at this time for this common purpose, but that's a pretty small blip on the radar of my entire life.

i guess i should take a minute to explain what the fuck the CELTA is. it's a 4-week long teaching certification course. i was in a group with 5 other people and we went through 2 tutors in the course of 4 weeks, teaching 2 different levels of adults. tutors observed and assessed our teaching, and our peers smugly judged and nit-picked (okay, only some of them). i learned a lot of esl/efl teaching methodology, simply so i could be more effective and professional in my current career path of teaching english abroad. so that's that. in a nutshell.

there were initially 24 people on the course, but i think 1 or 2 dropped out along the way. of this number, about half of us could be categorized as young-ish, and the other half were older than my parents. so roles were already inherently assigned, simply by age. both of my parents are still alive, so it was strange to have some of these older folks patronize me, just like the parents i already have DON'T.

anyhoo, that was my biggest complaint about the course. seemed like groups were assigned simply to make things more difficult than they needed to be. but overall, i guess it was a rewarding experience. rewarding in that i will soon have an actual piece of paper issued by cambridge university that says i can now demand more money at whatever lucky school gets me in the future. woo hoo! time and money well spent. plus, it was an excuse to go to another country in asia. funny thing about that is that i've seen absolutely nothing of ho chi minh city aside from the walk to and from my school. i hope to get out and about starting next week. traveling north will ensue, in the company of two cool chicks from the course, mary and carli (representing south africa and kansas, respectively). the tentative plans cover halong bay, hanoi and sapa. sapa might be a bust as that area just had the shit flooded out of it a few weeks ago. we shall see. after that might head over into laos and then down to cambodia. this is all an idea in my head, there's been no fact-checking or timetabling. seems like both of those factors could quite limit this as yet fictional vacation. i guess just because countries are close together doesn't mean they can be frequented and then departed in a quick (or efficient manner). a travel agent should clear things up a bit.

anyhoo, this is all the bloggage that time (and a shopping date) allows me at this point. more celta/other asian country musings will ensue.

more china

i'm sitting in the chinese version of a pc bong, but this one has two floors and significantly less smoke and ramen than its korean counterpart. there are rivers of sweat rolling down my back. and all i can think is "fuck, what the fuck will vietnam in july feel like?" i can't believe i actually used to play basketball in heat like this. so yes, the show me state games of my adolescence are what immediately came to mind the first day i wandered around this arguably remote city in china. a strange association...

feel like i should do some quick comparisons between korea and china before the newness wears off. so here, in list form (my favorite!) are some things i've noticed:

1. fashion and whatnot. not as many suits here in china. the nearly iridescent men's suit was as ubiquitous as the women's stiletto and frilly, doll-like dress. my guess is that fancy suits cost money, which is something china doesn't have a lot of. anyhoo, it's quite refreshing to see people who look, well, normal. people of all different sizes. people who clearly lack fashion sense and favor the functionality of their clothes (which in these days means not dying from heat stroke) over anything else. but don't worry, the whores in jules and rory's hood still sport heels, which, in a way, is functional since they spend most of their time on their backs...or knees...

2. modes of transport. let's see. i use my legs a lot, nothing too special there. but in the past week i've traveled by plane, train, taxi, strange archaic cart thing with a sputtering engine (pictures forthcoming), manual pedicab (and uphill at that, pedaled by a very strong 57 year old man), and the cheating pedicab with an engine. me likey pedicabs.

3. people. the people here are really friendly and seem shocked to see me, or me and jules and rory, or any group of foreigners. seem to be a relatively limited number of us here in this most populous country. it feels so much different to be pointed at and stared at here than it did in korea. here i'm quite aware of how foreign i really am to most people who see me. in korea the shock (and awe) of my presence was totally unwarranted and annoying.

4. foreigners. i haven't met a lot of foreigners (see #3), but the ones i met have been in a sort of professional capacity. i say "sort of" because i don't work for ef yet (fingers crossed for working with jules and rory). but it seems like china attracts a much different crop of people than korea did. they seem to have their shit together a little more than foreigners in korea and most of them take their jobs very seriously. there actually seems to be some sort of methodology to teaching that i've seen at the two ef branches i've visited. i'm very excited about the chance to get my celta and then actually, immediately use the techniques in a professional setting, as people at both ef branches actually talked about teaching in teacher terms. a little intimidating, but it also makes the "i'm an english teacher" line feel like less of a sham.

so this was from the other day. a few days later now, and i have the pleasure of internet usage at jules and rory's apartment now. i've also been offered the job at ef in jiaxing after i finish my course in vietnam. fuck an a.

i'm not feeling very long-winded today, which shocks even me. but i would be remiss not to mention how fucking therapeutic it feels to be in this new country with people i actually like. seriously, this hot apartment in a small-ish chinese town is exactly the mental health sanitarium i needed. who'd've thunk. i like words (real or imagined) that have two apostrophes in them.

china grove

i am in china. so there.

it's hot and there's a strange squeaking sound in this computer place, so i'm not in the mood for lots o' typing.

"that's just, like, your opinion, man."

well, i guess it's been a while. but not without good reason. i've had the misfortune of being ass-deep in a bunch of logistical bullshit lately. and for those of you who've never been in that position, it's not a fun one.

for starters, i'm getting the fuck out of korea (yes, let's all let out a giant, rallying cry together!). that happens on the 28th of this month. which means that my current job did not, in fact, make me an offer i couldn't refuse. if i thought nearing the end of my first solid year at one job in korea would make me feel validated, happy, satisfied and/or more like a teacher--or i guess any other amalgam of generally positive things--i was sorely mistaken. the fact is, i can't wait to leave. with increasing frequency i find my days colored by the overwhelming urge to punch strangers, acquaintances and pretty much everyone i come into contact with in their fucking face[s]. and yup, that's probably not healthy. but let's examine these feelings, shall we?

wait wait wait. don't want to "blow my wad" all at once (yes, i typed that. as much as i love sexual euphemisms, some of them are just better (or worse) than others. case in point: i find the term "blow my wad" completely derivative and banal. so what does that make me? hmmm...). so first things first, it seems appropriate to expound on the aforementioned logistical woes.
there's a little event going on this summer known as the beijing olympics. in other words, "the event that has seriously tried to fuck up my world." i'm starting this CELTA course on july 21st in ho chi minh city. my job here in the korea finishes on june 25th. so that adds up to an ample amount of time to do something besides work for 6 fucking days a week at a place where i'm underappreciated and that sucks a little more of my ever-waning soul each day (apparently the jobby job replaced the soul chunks with chunks of melodrama. woo hoo.).

my favorite people in the world just happen to live in china. seems pretty convenient. after all, the last time i flew to china to visit jules and roar, it consumed far less time than my usual subway commute. so the first step in all of this was to add more pages to my passport, in preparation for my new visas. went to the embassy in seoul, got the pages in a day. easy enough. and free. and uber-patriotic (seriously, the new pages all have america-loving tripe printed all over them. AMERICA: FUCK YEAH!).

after that, i thought it would be as easy as going to the travel agent with my passport and a lil' wallet picture to get my chinese visa. just like the other two times. then i found out that i had to have proof not only of my flight into china, but proof of my departure from china as well. because of the olympics. fucking sports.

flight to china from korea was no problem. but the flight into ho chi minh city from shanghai was a total bitch to find. i attempted to book 4 different flights--one of which required some execution of my more than rusty spanish skills (yeah, i know. spanish for a flight to vietnam? it's all part of the nightmare that has been my last few weeks...)--and each of them were confirmed then cancelled. yikes. so i have been doubly panicking--1) oh god, i'm not going to be able to get to china to see jules and roar; 2) oh god, i'm not going to be able to get to this program in vietnam that i already paid for. there was also the 2 day train ride from beijing to ho chi minh city, but again, olympics fucked that all up. 2 days ago expedia.com rocked my world. i've got bonafide PAPER tickets en route to my apartment as i type this. old school shit there. sweet tits! hallelujah! thank you, jesus!

so yes, on the 28th, i will be going to china (visa in progress now. cross your fingers) until the 18th of july. then i fly to ho chi minh city. start my course on the 21st. after 4 weeks i have a lot of free time before i head back to china to work with jules' school. so now i need to start planning some more in-depth vietnam travel, along with the very real possibilities of laos and cambodia. sort of strange to wrap my brain around the fact that i am going to do all of this. and yeah, all by my lonesome. that's cool enough to warrant a smiley emoticon.

:)

oh yeah, but i still have to mail all of my possessions to china. let's just say one tends to accumulate many things over the course of 2 years...but even the relatively small amount of purging i've done has felt really good. molting off the badness of my past year. so i guess this segues nicely into the less than forgiving stance i've taken on korea.

list form seems like an appropriate way to burn one's bridges (assuming any koreans and/or fucking annoying foreigners in korea read this). truth be told, i've been trying to give korea the benefit of the doubt for the past two years i've been here. and yes, there are some people who defy my own educated stereotypes, but these are the [arguably unhealthy] observations i've made:

1. ethnocentrism. living amongst a culture that is so immersed in itself for this past year has taken a very tangible toll on me. sure, there are people in america who are staunch patriots and skinhead racist types, but here it's sort of overwhelming (uh, they're not skinheads. but they are racists. i'm done acknowledging what i've come to accept as a very dismal fact in my usual friendly-type way). koreans are so proud to be korean that they shun all other cultures or just make fun of everything about different cultures that makes them so, well, different. it's the most disturbing in the context of my job. any time there's a picture of someone who's not korean, there's immediately a barrage of stereotypes that would never be accepted or ignored in an american classroom. then there's all the shit i pick up on that's not in english (either through my admittedly limited knowledge of the korean language, or through body language). the worst part of all of this is that the korean teachers, some of whom might have actually earned both respect and friendship from me, don't do anything to curb such behavior. one teacher said "they're young. they don't understand." i guess i don't think 4th and 5th graders are that young. they're not too young to be fluent in english, so why are they too young to attempt to appreciate the myriad cultures that employ that language? the point is, with all the fucking foreigners in korea, it doesn't seem at all justified or acceptable to point at another human and say "other." i also don't agree with the implication that it's okay to hate other cultures, or just grossly misunderstand them, up to a certain age.

this ethnocentrism also begs the question of "why the fuck are you learning english if you don't actually have any desire to leave your perceived korean utopia?" and yes, i know english in korea is all inextricably linked to government regulations, standardized tests and overbearing mothers, but i don't think the average korean kid has any concept of the large (and varied) world beyond his/her own meager borders. i guess that's where i really feel like i've failed as a teacher. ever the idealist, i thought that being my charming [albeit different] self could convince students that language enables travel and adventure and an actual "world" view and all the things that motivate me (or used to before i hit this most recent wall) on a daily basis. uh, yeah. failure. bummer, yo.

2. cultural identity. this ties in closely with the ethnocentrism. for a country that co-opts everything that is japanese, chinese and/or vaguely western, they sure still hate all these places. funny to hear little kids talk about how much they hate japan. or how terrible china is. never mind the fact that the haircuts, fashion and food are japanese; the language is dumbed-down from mandarin/chinese (the chinese didn't seem to have a problem with their language, and i doubt they're all geniuses...), with some butchered english "cognates" thrown in for good measure. i guess this is more about how families instill values in kids. for a long time i didn't listen to led zeppelin because i seem to recall one of my parents saying they were overrated.

3. vanity. you can't fully understand this until you've been in the elevator with a korean. or sat next to a korean on the subway. i'm not just talking girls here. the perpetual adjusting, applying, preening, straightening, pouting, photographing of an entire country. it's exhausting to witness. not even worth further explanation. again, not totally understandable unless one has been to korea.

4. work ethic. seems to be some confusion over the concept of efficiency. here, it's not so much about getting the job done as it is about putting in the time. i think the average korean is a glutton for punishment, simply because "that's the korean way." i've heard this so many times in reference to the long hours people put in at work. but how much of that time is spent simply for the sake of appearances? this should more accurately be labeled confucianism or collectivist culture, but i wouldn't want to imply that everything about a collectivist culture is bad. i don't think it is completely, but it does serve to foster this worker bee attitude (if one allows oneself to enjoy their life, that person is obviously not working hard enough for the greater good. the greater good being hard to define, but from what i've gathered, i guess it's just the image of hard-work, even if that hard-work is actually just a lot of sitting around. definitely quantity over quality round here).

it also perpetuates stereotypes--if one person thinks something's bad (be it another culture or cutting out of work once the actual job is finished), then it must be. a person could find out for him/herself, but that's not how koreans roll. this collectivism pervades every aspect of daily life--from the communal lunch to the girl passed out in a bathroom stall surrounded by her own vomit. you take your meals/drinks together, and you can only leave when everyone else does.
5. foreigners, ex-pats, whatever the fuck we want to call ourselves in korea are inherently fucking douche-bags. except for me. that warrants another smiley :) uh, yeah. the vast majority of foreigners i've met here are weird, alcoholic, misogynistic, overbearing and/or cliquey losers. and if you're not at least one of these things when you get here, you sure will be by the time you leave. i'll gladly wallow in my solitude, because the alternative is soooo much worse. my point is, i'm pretty great. yeah, i know.

6. extreeeeeeeeme homogeneity. sort of the link of all these societal ills (aside from number 5...). everyone looks the same. i guess the concept of homogeneity is not one that really warrants too much explanation. all cities look the same. all the people dress the same (be they college girls or old women, they've all got their unofficial uniforms). the standards of beauty are all the same. the bars are all the same. the food all tastes the same. everything here is "same same."

i suppose 6 seems like a solid number of complaints, and this is long enough. i guess i need to make my overriding points here...i think no one has the right to complain about anything unless they've been intimately acquainted with it. so i guess in some ways i feel like i've earned the right to makes these critiques.

perhaps it's hypocritical of me to talk about xenophobic little kids in the context of my own arguably stereotypical diatribe and whatnot. but i don't think so. i came here with the best of intentions, with the same genuine starry-eyed wanderlust that i can only hope beautifully "afflicts" everyone on the planet at some point. and yes, there have been some amazing experiences in korea, but the frequency with which they happen has been in decline from the onset. the wanderlust was instead replaced by this feeling that my own life in korea was something i had to "endure" to become a better, stronger, more charismatic person. i'm done giving this country the benefit of the doubt and feeling guilty about the less than stellar review i've given it.

i'm excited about vietnam. i'm excited about china. i'm excited about the opportunity to live elsewhere and about the chance to do so in a simpler way. i've made a lot of money in korea (or at least more than i could have made stateside). but instead of any sort of relief i assumed this would give me, i've become consumed by finances and materialism. i hate that part of me. there are days when the idea of what is considered physically beautiful repulses me, when the idea of wealth repulses me, so much so that i want nothing more than to look disgusting or to burn a large wad (there's that word again!) of money, simply because it would be something different.

i'm ready to be done with very obvious manifestations of wealth. always been a bigger fan of subtlety (in pretty much all aspects of life). and poverty. i mean, if you want to talk about building character, i'm sure there's nothing better than being dirt poor...just ask someone who's dirt poor.

i guess it's my blog. i don't need to attempt to further justify my own opinions. let's just say it's been a rough year. and the goal when i came here was not to be more bitter. i am stronger (that's a nice, vague word when you think about it), but not without a cost. i guess it will take time to figure out whether it was worth it.

oh yeah! i was in a car accident on saturday night with my co-teacher. her car is slightly fucked, but no one was hurt.