Weird Thing

So there is this weird thing happening, which is, more and more I am unable to see the Asian-ness in my students' faces.  Like, some of them, I look at them and I can't even fathom how they are Chinese.  There is this one student in one of my freshman classes who is pretty hip-looking, with cool glasses and done-up hair, and for some reason I look at her and she looks completely American to me.  I can't remember what I thought of her the first time I saw her but now, I see no signs of Asian appearance even though I'm sure she must look Asian.  And the pre-masters students I see twice a week, and there are only 15 people in the class so I know most of them personally, and I spend so much time speaking in English with them that when we are out of class and they turn to each other and say something in Chinese, it is almost shocking to me.  Like I feel surprised and like it is unnatural that they should be speaking something other than English.  And sometimes I will sit in class while they're doing something and stare at their faces and try to imagine how they look Chinese.  Some of them do but some of them, I just can't pick out signs of ...difference.  Weird!!
Probably, ya'll are gonna look foreign to me when I get back...

Normal Things

I guess I have been slacking on my blogging lately, but I've been quite busy doing not much of anything. haha.  Which is fine, honestly, if I could just convince myself that it was.  I genuinely like living more simply, sleeping 45 minutes more than I need per night, bumming around for a few hours in the morning, having time to go out for dinner, killing an hour on facebook, considering an afternoon of shopping to be my exercise for the day, sitting and thinking for half an hour before bed.  I like this pace.  I just have to convince myself of it.  I'm so wired to be living at maximum capacity at school that when I have not much to do, it feels wrong.  I'm not bored.  I just feel guilty. But if I could get over the guilt, and feeling naughty about not being crazed, I might actually feel content.  It's not like other people are writing novels or running marathons.  My roommate goes out drinking every night, gets up for class at 8AM, then sleeps from 11-5 and wakes up in time to go out to dinner with the European exchange students and then skype with her boyfriend.  So whatever, this is just how it is going to be for a while. 

In other news, I went to Macau this past Sunday with Cheikh.  This is exciting because:
1. We did not die, get arrested, get lost, argue (not that this would be possible anyway), etc.
2. A year or two ago, before I had any inkling that I would be coming to China, Dad bought me this novel about a piano teacher who moved to Macau in the 30s with her husband.  At the time I had no knowledge of Macau, and so much less of China, and I obviously didn't consider the setting in the way I would have had I known I would be visiting that city soon.  Actually I don't think I was even sure how to pronounce Macau when I was reading that book.  Anyway from what I remember, Macau was portrayed as this intense place with stifling humidity, and sudden rainstorms that drenched everything, and strange foods in street markets, and expats sitting in European-style bakeries, and scenic views of the coast, and Chinese people in rickshaws rushing around narrow streets.  Well, wouldn't you know it, it still feels like that.  Just like that, except with lots of Western tourists in the center of town, and fancy European clothing stores, and motorcycles, and a bit more gloom in the sky than I would have guessed from the book.  And we only spent five hours in the city, it's not like I lived there like the woman in the book, but it seems so crazy to have read about some unknown exotic place, having no idea you'd one day be there, and then be standing in the square that the narrator described walking through every day!  Like, I knew this city before I knew it but when I was learning about it I didn't even know I would eventually actually know it! Crazy.

Anyway when I got home I had a total mental breakdown and called Mom but of course she never answers any of her phones! MOM! So I sat in my room alone and cried for a while and then felt a bit better.  I think I was just emotionally exhausted from trying to navigate a strange land with someone who might as well be from Pluto.  I dunno.  I think it will just take some time for us to learn to function together out in the world, without google translate at our disposal.  I mean we had fun of course.  It's just fun mixed with stress and confusion, which is tiring. 

More to say, but I have to rework my lesson plan for this class I have in an hour because somehow things got chaotic in the last class.  Hehe.  Not that the Chinese mind a bit of chaos, but I do. 

Some Pictures

Language Barriers

Number of people in dinner party: 5
Number of languages necessary for all members to converse: 4.  English, French, Arabic, Mandarin. 
How silly!
P.S. New pictures up on snapfish!

Homesick

Today, finally, I felt homesick.  But actually, more Vienna-sick.  I was on the bus and suddenly had this aching, aching longing for Vienna.  I was on the bus because Cheikh and I were going to Gongbei, the part of Zhuhai right on the Macau border, just to walk around and stuff.  It was really tough, as you can imagine.  If I had gone with any one of my friends, it would be sort of tough, just finding our way around and deciding when and where to eat and how to find the bathroom and what to do.  And if that friend and I had never been to Gongbei together, it would be that much tougher.  Now add thousands (THOOOOUSANDS) of Chinese people on vacation and an absence of verbal communication with your travelling partner to that equation.  It was worth it, to have the day with him, but... what the hell am I doing?!?
But anyway, on the ride there, I was thinking, wouldn't this all be so much easier if we were in the states?  There I know what to do, where to go, what restaurants look sketchy, how to act, just...everything.  I understand things.  I know who to smile at and who to avoid.  I know when it's OK to cross the street and which water bottles are water and which are not water.  Even in Vienna, if we were in Vienna it would be so much easier.  I could be tour guide instead of fellow-confused-wanderer. 
And then I had a realization on a different topic.  So a few posts ago, I talked about this coma thing I was experiencing, which hasn't gone away.  And I've been starting to think I'm losing it or I have some vitamin deficiency or something.  But then I was looking around at the people on the bus and noticing how many people were sleeping, or slumped over, how many couples with heads on shoulders, how many floppy-looking babies, at 1 in the afternoon.  And I had noticed that the Chinese generally walk really slowly.  I'm always passing people on the way to class and walking around people in the streets, and you all know how I like to walk at a leisurely pace.  So, it's gotta be the heat.  Making people floppy and lethargic.  And putting me in a coma.  I have felt sooo floppy and lethargic, all the time, and smiling and laughing less than usual, which is alarming.  But so now I think my coma is less from silly boy, although that is still contributing, and more from stifling humidity.  Because people never looked floppy in Vienna.  People were never sleeping or slumped over on each other on the buses and subways.  But it was always cold there.  And come to think of it, I felt so much more alert there.  Less smiley and giggly, also, but always wide-eyed and awake.  I haven't felt really awake at all since I've been in China, not once.  Always dazed. 

Chinglish

Part of the reason I anticipate the desire to collect silly possessions:
"I always at wait your love/But hasn't been/wait until/Perhaps at soon/Would be for a long time perhaps/But I know only/I would always/of under etc. go to"
"love is a kind of meet, a very difficult meet.  Ae the right time to meet the right people into some love."
"Butterfly.  Dutter-colored fly.  We often see a kind of insect-butterfly.  They fly in the sky, brushwood, tussock, auso between the flowers with their smart wings, which make the nature more beautiful." 
"In the afternoon one day, when 'smoked' As usual, the completion of her chores Cooking, cleaning, laundry and so on,"
I kid not. 

Alternating Good and Bad News

Bad news: I am going to come home with SO MANY silly possessions.  I went into the school store today to buy a single notebook and came out with four, because they are so hilarious.  I am totally getting into this aesthetic. 
Good news: Today is national day and we have a week-long break.
Bad news: I bought this beverage in juicebox form thinking it was this kind of wheat tea I like (sounds weird, but good) but it turned out to be this thick, bready stuff, like bread batter in a juicebox.  Who wants that?
Good news: We had a party last night with a bunch of Chinese students and some other international folks and it was the most good, clean fun I've had since, like, elementary school.  We played ice breakers, and sang a lot of songs, and drank soda and ate bananas and chips and cherry tomatoes.  And banana chips, and tomato-flavored chips.  Oh, and everybody had to wear red in celebration of the holiday so it was really cute.  Cheikh came over and I was trying to explain in advance to him that there was a party going on, but I don't think he understood because when we got there he was totally surprised.  But then I think he had fun.  All the Chinese students were really confused about having to speak to him in Chinese instead of English but then they all wanted pictures with him. 
Bad news: I feel like I am not speaking any more Chinese than when I came three weeks ago.
Good news: I had a lesson with my tutor today and she taught me how to write some characters, so now I recognize like 6 characters instead of none.