life is good

so i never did leave work early that day. i did however, leave the internship about 4 days early. bringing me to xiamen the tuesday of the week before classes begin.

yesterday i ran into 2 slash 3 other guys from the program. it was nice to speak english. but by dinner time we had decided to only speak chinese. this didn’t hold up that well, but still was mildly frustrating.

ohhh it was nice. i think this is going to be a good time. even if it’s awful i can’t see not looking back in 4 months and thinking that this was one of the most ‘amazing experiences’.

oh yesterday and last night were a trip. stephanie and qing bin’s day of fun. dancing at very chinese clubs. etc. etc.

and that weekend that i wanted to start early. was quite entertaining. went to huanzhou and got cupped. that’s right cupped. as in cupping. didn’t understand so i said ‘dui’ in the spirit of adventure and within 2 minutes i had about 20 burning hot glass bowls suctioned to my back. this was fine. kinda nice actually.

what’s not as cool - is that the circular marks are still all over my back. i haven’t told anyone yet, but i will. actually that’s a lie i had my friend take some pictures. but the ppl from the program just think i wear very conservative clothing all the time. even last night to the clubs where i wore a long sleeved shirt b/c that’s the only thing i had to cover my back up.  a bit warm. but actually quite funny.

anyway.

so it turns out at least 1/3 of the other students in this program have spent the summer studying in beijing. and the other 2/3 are pretty freaking amazing academically. mildly intimidating. mildly. i realized yesterday on stephanie and qing bin’s day of fun, that i remember noooo chinese. he’s a chinese teacher, and got a kick out of looking through my
chinese text. and then he started asking me about the text and the lessons and it was a little upsetting how little i knew. eh.

so MIA. her stuff’s all over the room - which has been great. i have a dvd player and nail polish…
i’m assuming she’ll show up sometime soon.. and i think i might be moving rooms soon..idk what’s going on though. i think that’s the theme of my china trip: idk what’s going on.
anyway.

at the advice of ujb, i’m gonna go ahead and -enjoy life-. i think that ducking out an hour early to start my weekend falls under the category of enjoying life. i know i’m going to enjoy when i do it in t-minus…2 minutes.

peace homey.

oh man. why is today not over yet? i don’t get it. we got here later than ever today (only by 15 min, but every little bit counts..), i actually had work to do for the better part of today, i took double the usual amount of time to go get lunch, and i ate really late in the day…

if my estimates are correct, and clearly they’re not, it should’ve been 5pm like 20 hours ago.  
thank goodness it’s friday.

“stefAnnie, i want to take you out to lunch today.” president of company says. “HOT food.”

“hot?” i’m thinking maybe it’s really warm, or popular food. ‘hot’ in a Paris Hilton kind of way.

“very spicy. the only real chinese food is spicy food.”

at this point my face must have crumpled in fear or something because he started telling me that i had to try it whether i liked it or not.

somewhere in between me dodging the chili peppers and tearing up and sweating, the boss was promted to tell me the following story:

‘in the 80s i worked in tanzania. my boss worked for the embassy there, - he was from Hunan province. he would not eat anything unless there were red peppers on it. i used to be like you. i used to hate spicy foods. but when your boss likes it, you learn to like it.’ 

he piled my plate with more perfectly good tofu covered in chili peppers and another spice that in english translates to ‘alarming seed’. it’s quite alarming.

in the end i survived. it was no haiti part deux, where my best friends became a bucket and the bathroom floor. and i got to hear that and many other great stories slash advice from the president. in the end it was quite lovely.

we talked and he said that if i was staying til the 26th he would take me to a restaurant that specializes in food from the Fujian province - which is where i’ll be living til next year. he’s travelling from today until the earlier date that i would leave, and while that sounds like a great 2 hours, the extra 4 days of coming to the office that it would require don’t seem to make it worthwhile.

also i’ll have 6 months to eat this type of food. okay fine, 5.

on a similar note i am sooooo soooo happy i’m not studying/living in Hunan or Sichuan Provinces.

So the food is fabulous. still. What’s not quite as fabulous, is having everyone stare at you when you eat. or do anything. Even when i’m with other Shanghainese ppl i get stares.

so i started cancelling on the italian b/c i’d kind of rather sleep. anyway.

so at the suggestion of emily (and b/c i love massages) i went to get a ‘chinese massage’ yesterday. she recommended this place, but it was in Puxi, which isn’t far but i might’ve been up past my bedtime of 9pm had i gone. so i said that i’d find one by me and go to Puxi w/ her another time. i asked the women at the desk in the hotel where to go, and i said ‘massage’ in english, so they wrote down an address and i went there.

idk if saying ‘massage’ instead of ‘an mo’ changes the meaning, or if this was like the ‘there’s a pool on the roof’ type of initiation thing, but it was a ‘men’s only’ (see also: nasty) ‘massage’ place. the guys at the front door had a blast trying to explain this to me.

so i went back near the hotel to get dinner, giving up on the massage thing, when i realized that next to the place i eat there’s a massage place. a really really sketchy looking one. but since the nasty one looked really clean and high-class, i’m thinking sketchy is the way to go.

i go in and a little old man - literally, about 2 feet shorter than me and freaking old, took me upstairs. i was thinking that if this was the nasty kind of massage place, they must be freaks.

so it turns out to be the good kind of massage place and the old man starts talking to me in chinese.

it was great in the end, and i’m more than mildly in love with this old man, but everytime he touched my legs, ass, or most other parts of my body, i started hysterically laughing. and idk how to say ‘tickle’ in chinese, so it was really
hard to explain. this was awkward not only for the obvious reasons, but also b/c the massage parlors here are big rooms where everyone lays together. so there were about 20 other chinese people wondering what the hell was wrong w/ me as well. in the end he flipped me over on to my sides and touched my ribs. oh man.

so i’m not saying i’d never do it again. i think i’ll do it many more times, esp since it’s about $5/hour, but i might just go w/ emily next time. whenever i do things w/ her they work out great. whenever i think i can just handle things on my own i find myself in the most awkward situations of my little brown life.

so you’d think shanghai’s such a big city - it’s probably like NYC or at least advanced and used to foreigners, etc. at least that’s what i thought. and i was sooo wrong.
everyone stares. and when there’s another white person, they attack. i’m wondering if after a few weeks here i’ll turn into an attacker.. it’s b/c i (and the attackers) live in Pudong, which is a business district, which especially has never seen a white person before. so when there is a white person on the streets, it’s an exciting moment.
anyway.

alright well i’m going to get back to ‘work’. aka: researching nepal. it’s all i’ve done
for the past 3 days. by choice.

i was looking at cambodia, vietnam, and nepal for travel after xiamen/before G. oh i’m so not ‘going back to work’ yet. so i looked at all of them and fell in fucking love with nepal. i’m pretty sure cambodia’s out. and Maoist insurgence aside, nepal’s really safe. they have trekking to everest (just the base i’m not crazy. slash stupid.) and classes
where you can learn to teach yoga. and about a million other things that sound amazing. i’m thinking since i only have 10 days max b/f i go see G, the trekking would be my choice b/t all of them.

and that’s another thing. G. this whole distance thing isn’t as much fun as i thought it would be. -some distance is lovely. but i’m thinking a month tops, especially when you can’t really even talk on the phone. i’m just not happy w/ it all right now.

and there are no real reasons for that, i just decide sometimes that i don’t like him. and i realize that he’s somewhere in the sahara right now, exploring egypt and whatever, but show a sister some love. 2 emails a week isn’t going to do it. but neither’s 10.. wow i would NEVER want to date me. 

alright i’m gonna go for real this time. it’s my 10am ‘make tea and walk around’ break. if i waste at least 15 minutes of every hour wandering, peeing, making tea, going to the watercooler, etc. time goes by a lot faster.
no complaints really though - work is good. i do whatever i want, and i can keep myself entertained…

went out w/ F last night. and at the risk of losing my only english-speaking friend here, talked about how excited i was to see the nanpengyou in december. think it was fine. last night was nice and all but just made me miss the NPY. the distance thing isn’t as much fun as it sounds..

anyway.
so good news - i’m leaning away from cambodia, which everyone thinks is unsafe (pol
pot’s the only thing ppl can think of when it comes to cambodia..), and really really
leaning twds: Nepal!! where there perhaps are some Maoist insurgencies, but no one who
can’t be paid off for less than 10$. plus i heard they give you a receipt for
bribes/forced “donations”. -tax refund?? 

all i have to do now, is decide between trekking for a week, or doing and learning to teach
yoga for a week. i want to do both. really badly. but if i want to make it to I’s by my
bday and such i’m only going to have around 10 days.. i think i’m going to go w/
trekking. it’s cheaper too. and character building. both are dirt cheap. if you can
afford to get to this part of the world, you can live like a king once you’re here.
(shanghai not included) 

hmm..maybe i should think more about xiamen and the tests i have
coming up before i start planning the fun time? maybe not.

so. it’s possible F took me to lunch. and then coffee. and made plans for dinner. and getting a drink.

though it’s not fluent english, it’s nice to be able to say things. even sometimes complicated things - compound sentences and such.

alright well i actually have some work to do - translation work. a lot of english to better english translations, but also chinese to english. i’m awful at reading chinese. and today i decided that an apple got to take the place of my pocket dictionary in my bag.

we’ll see.. 

so after all the ranting about the ridiculousness of this internship, the president came over and talked to me a bit before we left friday evening. he told me that i would be doing things on monday, after getting settled for a day or two. then he asked how much interns in the US generally get paid, and how much i wanted to get paid.

saturday emily took me around shanghai. see also: paid my way into everything in shanghai. i’m not gonna lie, i got over the uncomfortability of it all quite quickly (it also made things a lot more comfortable when i tried to argue..) and just enjoyed myself. it was freaking great.

i’ve noticed that going along with things has been the best way to go. people get upset when i don’t. from what i can tell, there is always a plan, i just don’t know about it. sunday i made my own plans, and in the end it was a fantastic day, but it didn’t start out so smoothly. which is fine. but i’m okay with going along with things.

 i guess this is sort of great. better than filing.

on sunday i’m pretty sure i almost got one of those dirty massages.

i got my hair cut, and the guy gave my head a massage, which i read was to be expected in shanghai. this was okay. but the massage overall focused more on my boobs (or tried to) than any massages i’ve heard of, and wasn’t really that good. also the guy kept asking if i had a boyfriend - nanpengyou. i said hell yes, or dui, wo you yi ge.

the whole thing cost $2.50. but i feel like i should’ve gotten paid.  

in the end it wasn’t the nasty kind of massage, it was just that the guy wanted to be my nanpengyou. he ran after me in the street and asked for my # and if he could be my chinese nanpengyou. i said i had a nanpengyou, and didn’t want him. he said, you should have 2- one in china, one in US. we went back and forth for a bit and eventually i pretended not to understand anymore and walked away quicker. he was harmless, but annoying.    

also, this place is a bit like haiti, where if you’re white, blanc, bairen, - you get stared at intensely everywhere you go. and sometimes hassled to buy fake purses. this all happens less when i’m going around with some shanghainese.

on the up side, the italian exec, Fabio, at work, asked me to tell him if i wanted to go out or see shanghai anytime. this, along w/ some small talk, all went down at the watercooler. fabio is a very attractive guy, and idk if he literally means go out b/c i’m the new kid here, or not, b/c i’m intensely naive when it comes to reading those things, but either way i was happy. 

i do, however, have a nanpengyou. and though he may not be my favorite person right now, that’s not a reason to go out seeing the shanghai nightlife with a guy named fabio.

a very attractive guy named fabio.

anyway. seeing as i’m sitting about 2 feet away from F’s office and other coworkers’ desks right now, maybe i switch topics..

1. A modified muscular pouch behind the stomach in the alimentary canal of birds, having a thick lining and often containing ingested grit that aids in the breakdown of seeds before digestion.
2. A similar digestive organ found in certain invertebrates, such as the earthworm.

gicrium

gigria

yk^w

okay the one child policy: basically you can only have one legal child. if you do have more than one child, you have to pay thousands of dollars per year until the kid is 18 for him to exist, or really to have citizenship and to be recognized as your kid. basically who ever has siblings, their parents are paying OUT OF THEIR ASSES for them to be theirs.

siblings are for the rich…soon to be in debt.

so that’s why people are so interested. it’s about status.

i feel like i learned all this in school many moons ago.