Actors' Resumes at the Shanghai Consulate

August 17th.

I have 278 RMB in my wallet, the equivalent of about $80. It goes a long way here. At a roadside vendor, I can buy a kebab for about 9 RMB. Bottled water costs 2. Bottled water is a must because you can't drink from the tap without boiling it first. It's just not sanitary.

The 278 is my ticket home. That, plus the 65 refund the hostel will give me for forfeiting my last night here, will get me a taxi to Shanghai Pudong International Airport, the same hub I landed in on August 7^th, the same place where I walked out of the terminal with high hopes for a new start in a new country, the same place where I spent two hours sweating and pacing waiting for the person that was supposed to meet me at the gate. The same place where I almost had to call home and say I had made a huge mistake. It didn't happen then. I found the little man holding my name sign after 33 hours of travel time, no sleep, lots of adrenaline, and not much food. The moment I found Kevin (his English name), I felt a wave of sweet relief. I wouldn't feel another wave like that until today.

And now it's August 20^th. I've traveled over 16,000 miles in the past three weeks, lived in two apartments, one hotel, and a hostel. I've been offered massages five times, groped once and hit in the nuts. I ran out on/quit/turned down a job, accidentally bought beer thinking it was soda, almost accidentally bought beer thinking it was water. I was able to understand Chinese many times, most notably an incident where the cashier at the store said “ta tingbudon” or “he doesn't understand.” I rode on the back of an E-bike across Ningbo to catch a bus to Shanghai. I nearly vomited on the bus to Shanghai because someone was eating something that smelled like ripe diarrhea. And then I saw the city and met the people and fell in love, all at the end. I found the right place just as I was leaving it.

So now to your question: What went wrong?

Don't get bad ideas about China from me. I love it there. But the people I met on the job were a confederacy of not-like-minded individuals who were a bit cowed and also willing to hire a complete criminal nut even after I told them about him. Looking back, I should have issued an ultimatum – You can hire him or me. But also looking back, I didn't know that any of this was going to happen and as much as I'd like to say I'm quick on the draw and can make good solid decisions in the midst of wrenching weird circumstances, I can honestly say there came a point where it was all too much. It was just too much.

The initial moment I realized this was when I was sitting in the first apartment and the conversation with Steve went from iffy to, “Courts are black magic.” When you realize that one of the only people you have to speak English with is insane while you yourself are going a little nuts as well after lack of contact for a week, it feels like falling, a sucking funneling hole in your chest that culminates in the flight response and the unrelenting thought: I have to get out.

But then there's nowhere to go.

So family and friends advised me to call the consulate. The consulate advised me to get out and head to Shanghai. At 1:20 PM on Thursday, I was walking across the plaza to work. At 1:22 PM on Thursday, I turned around and walked back into my apartment. At 1:30 PM, I walked out with everything I had packed in a suitcase and backpack. By 2 PM, I was at the Ningbo East Bus Station, which was the wrong bus station. A group of men yelled in my direction for a good ten or fifteen seconds before I realized they wanted to know where I was headed. I pulled up Google Translate on my iPhone, incurring about $10,000 for every bit of international data consumed, and showed them that I wanted the bus from Ningbo to Shanghai. The bus station was across the city and one of the men offered me a ride on his E-bike for 50 RMB. It wasn't much money but I would have paid anything to get out of there. The entire time I had this worry someone would stop me, that something would happen to keep me in that city. It was a good city; it's a good city. But for me it was prison.

I was on the bus with my Chinese cell and my iPhone trying to call hotels from a list that the consulate had given me. I was frazzled, overtired, overheated, and completely baffled about what country and city codes I needed to dial before each number. The only place I could reach was Mingtown Hiker Hostel. I made a reservation for three nights since the consulate said that it could take up to a week to get me back to the United States. I had hardly any money and no place to go but I did have enough to stay at the hostel. It turned out to be a wonderful place, like the universe's apology at the end - “Sorry you had a shit time of it. Here's a little consolation and a sign that you can find much better people and a much better situation next time.”

It wasn't heaven. Staying at the hostel would have presented its own type of loneliness, namely seeing all the nice people you meet come and go while you are stuck. It was more like a pleasant purgatory.

And now it's August 23^rd. There's been some time wonkiness. These dates are skipping across boundaries but for part of the world, it's August 23^rd.

I had run from my apartment to the Ningbo East Bus Station by taxi, from the bus station to the Ningbo to Shanghai bus stop by E-bike, up the coast three hours to Shanghai by bus, and straight through downtown at night by taxi again arriving at the hostel around 7:30 PM. I started my escape at 1:30 PM, not a bad jaunt for someone who doesn't speak the language. For a while I was worried that the bus was actually going to Hangzhou. It would have been a little more than disheartening to end up in the wrong city at that point.

At 1:22 PM I was going up the elevator to the office to go to work. If I had stuck it out for another sixty seconds, this story would have turned out differently. If I had run into someone in the lobby either time, someone that I worked with, this would have turned out differently. If I had connected on some meaningful level, as a person, with anyone in that office during those two weeks, this would have turned out differently. As it was, at that moment, pushing the 1^st floor button felt liberating. Walking out of my apartment with everything in hand felt like a prison break. Having the taxi driver understand my directions made me feel capable, and having a group of non-English-speaking Ningbo natives arrange an E-bike ride to whisk me across town to the bus station felt just damn angelic.

Going into Shanghai, I expected another cookie-cutter, imposing and dingy city. And it wasn't. There's something to be said for expectations. Most of the people I knew in high school and university are married and have children. We're all in our late twenties and thirties, a time when there's usually less room for risk. You're early in a marriage with a baby. You've got a serious job and the term “putting down roots” has significance. It's taken me until now to realize that's what most people plan all along. They plan marriage and family based on what they've seen as kids and teenagers and what they want as adults. It's pretty simple and I missed it. I never planned like that. Why am I mentioning this?

Drive into a Chinese city and you see quick, ambitious plans. You see ten of the same apartment building going up at once with ten adjoining cranes. You see skyscrapers built in record time. You see farmland jutting against commercial plazas. You see people farming ten feet away from backhoes that are digging up their crops. Incredible ambition paired with quick planning for a fast build. So much is a facade. My second apartment, which looked like the Ritz, was stunning and slapshod. The building was barely two years old and there were already repairs going on in the lobby. It's like that all over the country. It's as if the nation woke up one day and realized it could just develop develop develop. So it is developing recklessly.

Two years ago I was in so much pain that I was miserable. And then one day I wasn't. It had been chronic for years and then I was free. So I got ambitious. Quick plans, new horizons, just go go go. Develop. In 2010, left the girl I loved because we no longer shared the same dark cloud. Even years later I despise her for her anger because I shared it. It walked hand-in-hand with my misery. We lived in little apartments in little towns like Nacogdoches and Georgetown and Bryan and cast great big shadows with our little hearts everywhere we went. This went on for years after I graduated from Stephen F. Austin in 2007. And it's not like we were horrible people, more like whimsical downers, your jaded hipster friends.

Then the pain disappeared and I wasn't miserable anymore and I felt like I could do anything. So I moved out. I moved to Austin. Everything became very comfortable. Scary comfortable. Like “is this all there is to life?” comfortable. I got antsy and moved to China, a place where BMWs follow you on the sidewalk, people lie to you with impunity because it's a cultural imperative to save face, a place where no one know what the hell Texas is, a place that the entire United States thinks is communist but is actually a burgeoning capitalist bureaucracy with full-on corruption at every level and police officers that are afraid to run intersections because nobody stops for them. It's a place where women carry parasols and wear masks to stay pure and white, a place where there are provinces bigger than most of the world's nations that most of the planet has never heard of. Karaoke bars have prostitutes. All the drinkable water is bottled and the cities go on forever. It's a place that lays claim to the world's longest traffic jam, hundreds of miles and it lasted eleven days. It's a place that actively tried to destroy its own culture and is now trying to adopt ours.

Going there was my way of leaving everything behind, of clearing the ground. I remember sitting in front of The Highball cocktail bar in Austin just a few days before I left that city, looking out over everything wondering what that place would be like when I return. And when you look longingly at a city, you always look at the lights. You always do it at night. You do it alone when it's quiet. That's the easiest way to take a mental picture. I did it in Ireland sitting on a fence. I did it in Austin sitting on a sidewalk. I did it in Shanghai riding in a cab. I'm addicted to running and going. So in that respect, it's no surprise I pushed the button in that elevator in the office building in Ningbo. It's no surprise I felt like the freest man in the world zipping through the city on the back of an E-bike in my ridiculously orange shirt and shorts, like a glaring foreigner flag in the middle of a city full of people with a lot less choice and much less mobility. It was a familiar easy feeling: going.

I'm saying this because I know a lot of people have this dream, this urge, this need to get out and go. I hope everyone reading this has some notion to go and explore and maybe you'll do it smarter than I did, taking someone along, saving more money, but not hesitating to dive deep. That wasn't a mistake. Going wasn't a mistake. And now I will tell you where I made mistakes. Then I'll describe the last night.

Mistake #1

Leaving my sense of humor behind. That sense of whimsy, that sense of goofiness, that sense of ridiculousness that I think has followed me like a good old fashioned companion my entire life disappeared somewhere between my two-hour wait for Kevin at the airport and the moment I realized I didn't connect with any of the English speakers in my crowded little city. Somewhere in there I lost the ability to just sit down and laugh about nothing and part of that was because I didn't have someone there to remind me.

(Possible) Mistake #2

Leaving days too soon. I was sitting at the consulate in a room full of patriotic blue-and-red chairs with pictures of the President, VP, and Secretary of State looking down on me, and I met a woman who was also from Texas. She lives in Hong Kong and hasn't been back to the States for seven years. I also served as a witness for a couple getting their joint trust double-stamped. The consulate offered the way out: a plane ticket. And I have a regret. I regret not staying long enough to go completely broke, beating down every door looking for a job even though I was on a tourist visa, milking the international travelers at the hostel for information on how and where and when to go. Maybe I would have only had a few days but I could have done so much in those few days. But I was losing it. I was lost. I was getting more comfortable at the hostel. But it was like one big party staying there. I met a lot of people, and I made a lot of fly-by-night fun friends: Thomas from Austria, Sanesha from Iran, Kathryn from China, Emily from Ontario, Phoebe from the UK, Ricky from San Francisco. Even the other two Iranians that didn't speak English bought me a drink and tried to match me up with Kathryn who had been staying at the hostel for a month while searching for an apartment. I read stories of people staying at those places for six months at a time. I even think when I go back, that would be my first stop.

The phone call with my contact at the consulate went like this: “This is a last resort.” In Ningbo, this didn't faze me. In Shanghai, all the “Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure?” questions finally started to break my armor. Walking down Nanjing Road between Gucci and Zales and Starbucks and the Hyatt, sitting in a London-themed pub in the French quarter across from the U.S. Embassy looking at the Chinese guards with their automatic rifles, I thought to myself, “If they ask me one more time, I'm going to relent.” They asked one more time, “Are you sure?” And I didn't relent. The scales were so even and I have to say the overwhelming sense of everything, the day-to-day survival, the feeling of loss and disconnection still had to weigh on me with herculean force against the excited sense of simply living in the midst of all that energy and absurdity. It was a good time that opened up my life's possibility and potential like a brand new horizon. Give me a few more days, few more weeks to process everything, but this one thought has already come through on the post-landing ticker: I can survive on my own in a place where I understand almost nothing.

Mistake #3 (and then I'll tell you the ending, I promise)

Not giving myself a place, finding my place.

I didn't bring a book to the consulate. And their reading material was scant, let me tell you. There was only one piece that even resembled a magazine: Actors' Resumes. I thought it was a book of resumes by famous actors. It's actually a how-to manual for aspiring actors written in 1994. Confused about how to properly format your resume when searching for acting gigs? The book was in pristine condition. Guess there aren't a lot of aspiring actors doing their business on the 8^th floor of the 1300 block on W. Nanjing Road.

Funny thing is, I wasn't the only person that day who picked it up. I realized that's what people do in the American Services Center waiting room in Shanghai. They sit and wait and pick up that book and set it back down. It's not an odd duck; it's a wrong duck. Why is it there? Who put it there? Apparently everyone working in the consulate refuses to replace it or throw it away. They probably just don't know what to do with it. But it's still there and probably will be for years. Unless someone deliberately goes all the way to the bargain basement bottom of their priority list and replaces it, Actors' Resumes will always be at the Shanghai consulate.

I was something of a novelty in the hostel. When walking back to the pool table to check how Thomas and Sanesha were getting on, Thomas said, “Hey, we were just talking about you.” And of course I asked why. His response, paraphrased, was along the lines of, “We didn't expect someone from Texas to be like you or to treat Iranians so nicely.” And only this morning while writing this at 4:30 AM while my body tries to decide what side of the world it's on, do I realize that doesn't happen. You don't meet a Texan at the Mingtown Hiker Hostel in Shanghai. I guess when you do, they're not what you expect. Going to China I could have been whoever I wanted, could have started the process of reinvention or whatever romantic thing you can imagine but to actually be yourself, to maintain identity in a place full of so many characters and so much Other, is a feat. Not to reinvent, not to replace, but to find your place even when it all seems weird. I thought it was hard enough to find myself when everything was normal.

So, the last night.

I enjoyed myself. It went something like this.

Ordered a “Canadian Beef” hamburger at the hostel. Still not sure what the beef actually was. It looked like beef strips laid out like bacon but I'm still not entirely sure what I put in my mouth there. Was listening to a blowhard at the booth behind me give a couple the entire rundown on how the country works and what you should expect and watch out for and what's good and what's bad in Shanghai. It was like listening to an “Oh, look at all this stuff I know” speech rather than someone giving actual advice. After eating, it took me about two minutes to get fed up with that. So I asked the curly-haired guy at the next table if he wanted to play pool. That's how I met Sanesha.

We shot pool and talked world politics. He's convinced the US will attack Iran. I told him it's possible but that the American people are still pretty sick of war. Sanesha had come to Shanghai with his partners to buy construction equipment. They left him alone in the hostel to go do some business and he wasn't too happy about that. But when they came back it was a grand old time. They bought me a drink and tried to pair me up with Kathryn. Then his partners left again to go get massages. There was a foot massage place about fifty yards down the road.

Then I met the Austrians. I only caught one name: Thomas. And the Chinese guy sitting at the booth with us thought they said “Australians.” So he went into a whole spiel about how he had taken a vacation to Australia last year, which prompted Thomas: “No, we're from Austria. Not Australia. Fuck kangaroos.” I also asked the cookie-cutter question: “What are you doing here?” “We are drinking. We are professional beer drinkers.” I shouldn't have been surprised when I excused myself to go buy a drink and they just offered me one of theirs. Thanks, Austria.

When I told Thomas I was from Texas, he immediately wanted a steak. I said that I'd go home and bring one back. We got on really well and then that thing happened. There was a girl sitting at the booth directly in front of us pretending to read a book and looking bored. There was a guy sitting opposite her also looking riddled with ennui. They turned out to both be from Britain. The girl was Phoebe and I forget the guy's name but they didn't know each other. So, introductions all around. Austrians, Brits, Iranians, throw in Kathryn, and then Ricky from San Fran who was several hours into flirting with Emily from Ontario. There's your crowd.

We alternated playing pool in teams and sitting and joking. The one Chinese guy in the place, whose name I didn't think to ask, kept asking me, “You like snook? You like snook?” He meant pool. He was a funny guy, kept smiling. Emily, who had a boyfriend, laughed at Ricky's most awful jokes. Clearly she was into him. When I sat down next to her I got the side-groping treatment though, so I don't think Emily was being too particular. I think it was her fun night away from the boyfriend. Phoebe became enamored with the other Austrian. Kathryn kept trying to get Phoebe and Emily to go to “a Chinese bar.” It was fun all around.

And people kept buying me drinks.

It was my last night. I hadn't had a loose or fun or relaxing anything since landing in the country. So when Ricky mentioned going downtown to get tacos, I thought sure. Why not tag along? What Ricky didn't mention was that the place with the tacos was an expat superclub way downtown and that it would be packed.

He also didn't mention that he planned to get completely and utterly fall down drunk by 2 AM.

After almost two weeks of going and planning and sweating and walking and nail-biting and freaking out, I got out of a cab into a sea of white faces which was shocking, and walked into a two-tiered club complete with a balcony and upstairs dance floor. Emily and I both went through minor reverse culture shock. We didn't know what to do when surrounded by all these not-Chinese people. But then we did what you do at clubs: we danced. Ricky wasn't so much of a dancer. But I also didn't know that he was seriously into Emily. By the end of the night he was spinning “I love you” full well knowing she had a boyfriend.

The good thing is, whenever I wanted to escape their flirting and banter, I could just wait until the bar played “Tequila” at which point the bar girls would pour free tequila right into your mouth. So, you know, more free booze. Emily said the tacos were good, not great. But of course, she was still pretty sober. It reminds me of something I read once regarding one person's opinion of Taco Bell food: “If you ain't wasted, you can't taste it.”

So there we were, sitting outside after dancing and dancing and dancing. There was a French girl eyeballing me. Ten feet behind her was a Chinese guy making tacos. And sitting next to us, Emily was saying things to Ricky like, “I think I gave you the wrong idea.” It was really just your typical bar night. By about 3 AM, Ricky was droopy-eyed fall down drunk and every time I told Emily we should take him home, she'd say, “After this song?” So we danced and danced and Ricky got droopier, not just his eyes but his whole body. Oh, and I danced on the bar with Emily at one point.

Somewhere in there we also spent about thirty minutes watching the rhythmic stylings of a Chinese little person. That guy was ripped and he could move. I think this is a thing worldwide. If you are a little guy and you can tear it up on the dance floor, you've got it made. Imagine a bar packed full of white people, two of which looked like Oompa Loompa twins from Bavaria, taking straight tequila from the bar girls and watching a short Chinese guy breakdance and that should give you an image of what the party hard expats do in Shanghai.

Eventually Emily and I had to carry Ricky to the taxi. Then we had to convince him to get in the taxi. That took a while. The cab driver was much more patient than he needed to be but then I noticed the ride back cost almost twice as much as the ride there. 3 AM must be prime time for cabbies.

The cab driver dropped us off an intersection too early. And I swear if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't have the weird image/memory of China that I have now. Let me explain.

Imagine the Van Gogh cafe scene. Now imagine the lights are off and one of the tables is sitting in the middle of the street. Now imagine there are about six guys, all Chinese of course, sitting around that table eating and drinking beer out of bottles. All are clothed but some have their shirts off. That's what was between us and the door to the hostel.

So Emily and I are walking with Ricky and just as we get to that table, another expat comes bounding around the corner behind us. He may have been in his early twenties, pretty young looking. And he's happy drunk. He doesn't know the guys at the table but he knows Ricky. So he says, “Hey, guy from San Fran! How's it going!” But he doesn't wait for a response. This happy-go-lucky kid walks over to the table, says something like “food” or “eats” and grabs a huge strip of meat from one of the guys' plates while they all stare at him. He proceeds to try to drop it into his mouth from up high like he's inhaling Fruit by the Foot and since he's drunk and looking straight up in the air, falls into the table and knocks over a bunch of beer.

Emily and I just turn around and start walking toward the hostel. Ricky lags behind. I'm sure Emily and I were thinking the same thing: “The guy just stole food and knocked over beer. I don't want to get in a fight.”

Then I hear it.

Not fists flying or people yelling or anything angry.

It's a squeak.

More like: SQUEAK. SQUEAK. SQUEAK. And it's close.

I look down, fully expecting to see a rat run across the road. That wouldn't surprise me. No, I look down and I see a mouse in the middle of the road with its guts hanging out, writhing in agony in a pool of its own blood. And even though I'm not drunk, I'm buzzed enough to blurt out, “Don't look down.” So of course Emily looks down. It's at this point we started running. We made it all the way into the hostel lobby and then realized Ricky was still out there.

I don't know how many minutes had passed but when we went back outside the crazy food-stealing expat was gone. The Chinese guys didn't look any worse for the wear and Ricky was peeing on the side of the building.

That burned in my mind. I wanted to stay in China but I didn't want to stay like that. I felt bad for the image people were giving of foreigners, for the way they were treating the locals, for basically everything from the taxi ride home. I could have stayed at the hostel a few more days maybe and refused to go out, or refused to go out and act like that. In the end, I suppose it's not a huge deal but now I understand the recent Chinese 100 day foreigner crackdown a little better.

And that's it. I slept maybe an hour, showered, caught a cab and rode down The Bund to the maglev station and rode that 300kph wondertrain to the airport.

Now I'm back in Texas.

A few last notes here. Nothing necessary but stuff you might want to know.

I began studying Japanese last year with the idea to teach in Japan. My friend Miya at the University of Leeds, who I helped with a few school projects – one involving a voiceover, and you can laugh imagining a Texan voiceover for a Chinese girl presenting a project for a group of Brits - told me that if I wanted to be reminded daily about the absurd nature of life, I should teach in China. So I took her advice and changed my mind about where to go. One of my Spanish students in Lockhart, Angel, recommended offhandedly that I should use LinkedIn to find more students. Instead I found my first contact that offered me a spot in China. I ended up spending almost two more months in East Texas than I had planned this summer, jobless and spending money, because that contact dithered and eventually just disappeared on me and left me to scramble to find another contact quickly. At that point I was committed. I had put in almost seven months preparing and I was eager to take the first decent place that offered. When that place failed to mention additional costs and then paired me with Crazy Steve and then tried to tack on even more costs for me not wanting to live with Crazy Steve and hired him to work with children, I knew it was time to go.

I did a week and a day of work in Ningbo. The kids were wonderful. It turns out that the teachers get to name new students. So there's a Lost-themed class and there's a Chinese kid somewhere out there named Land Rover. I learned some simple and effective methodology for teaching that I will apply. I was trained. I just never took on the classes myself, which wouldn't have been much of a problem. And yes, one of the kids did come up and flick me between the legs while I was standing on a chair. And one girl groped my arm hair.

One of the two teachers I shadowed sent me a consolation email. Here's a bit of it:

From what I've seen you'll be a great fun teacher.

I understand that you may want to delete this email and forget the whole troublesome experience you had in ningbo; I just wanted to let you know that I can tell from you as a person that you'll be a great teacher. I'm sorry we didn't have longer together.

And then when I got back to Texas I received this from the last student I prepped before I left Austin:

I just wanted to let you know that I passed my test with ease. Thank you for the help and support.

As of now, the school I worked with in Austin has offered me a spot on board again.

I guess that brings us to today. Simply put, the whole months-long plan and the extra time not working plus the apartments overseas and the whole not working there thing has left me broke. I have a great family and people helping me out but it's funny. This is the first time since I can remember that I'm basically sitting on nothing. It's scary, humbling, liberating, and a kick in the pride I needed. I spent a lot of time in Austin having fun and wondering if there was more to life than just having stuff and being able to afford overpriced drinks. Turns out there's a great deal more. It might roll into you like Loneliness and Awe riding blindfolded on a tandem bicycle but there are most certainly some horizons out there still ready to push back and open up new possibilities when life gets too comfortable.

This Doesn't End Well

You're going to be disappointed. I know I am. I'm back in Texas. And it's a crazy story how I got back here. Here's the first part, which I don't even remember writing in the midst of everything.

August 13 – When I learn I almost roomed with a crazy person

Man. Man oh man oh man. Where to begin?

I had a moment today where I decided to open up and express just how badly I want to go home sometimes, that this lack of access to the internet and other English speakers coupled with the last bits of jet lag is making me want to run away screaming when I'm not in the classroom (today was my first day off and time to think). So I walked out of my room and talked to the guy that lives in the next room, my Mandarin speaking buddy. Here's a rundown of the things he said:

9/11 was an inside job.

Formaldehyde is in our clothes.

Florescent lights are poisoning our brains.

December 21, 2012 will be the day of reckoning.

He's got five charges against him in Canada that he's run out on.

He's not going to court because courts are black magic because the judge wears a black robe and summons you.

It's possible to control things with your mind (he was sitting at the kitchen table trying to will the upstairs neighbors' floor A/C to destroy itself).

He's never had a girlfriend.

He went to a Chinese massage place his first or second night here, right near the hotel. He informed me of the prices. Refers to the end part as the “rub and tug.” Gross. Gross. Gross. This is a personal preference thing but he never shuts up about wanting Chinese girls and expresses interest constantly and at length about getting “the whole thing.”

He's going to ask the school to cut out the part in the contract about giving a thumbprint to sign in to work every day.

Cameras are watching us all the time.

The guy came here to get away from the law and have sex. He doesn't get on with the kids at the school at all. The only plus is that he speaks Mandarin but I will force myself to live on my own, pay more rent, be broke, I don't care, if I don't have to be around this one second more. Some people open up to you and there's camaraderie. Some people open up and you realize they are bad news. This is bad news. This is such bad news.

So I called up the Director of Studies. Couldn't get him. Called the helper welfare officer that's supposed to attend to our needs like living arrangements and all that. She blatantly told me that I should just live with him anyway since I'm not in any physical danger. Really? It's all because they paid a deposit to the landlord today to guarantee the apartment. I haven't even signed a contract on it yet. I haven't even signed a contract with the school yet. My visa hasn't even been converted over. I'm technically working here illegally, even though that's the nature of the Chinese bureaucratic dragon. It doesn't care until it cares. Sometimes it works in your favor and sometimes you have to wait until it wakes its lazy dragon self up to get anything done. That's why I wasn't worried about the visa. Now I'm questioning the whole thing.

Then I called one of the teachers that I'm replacing and hooked a taxi over to her place by showing the driver the address in pinyin on my cell phone. There I told her, her boyfriend, and two other teachers that are married, the whole story over salad and pasta. It came out broken and sketchy but I was freaked and worried about telling too much and worried I was overreacting. But basically it came out to, “This guy opened up to me and he's insane.” I've gone against my gut so many times in the past, so many times, but not this time. The guy I'm living with is, excuse my French infix, certi-fucking-fiable. He's a sociopath. If they sign the contract, they are hiring a nut.

I tried so many times to ask Steve who he misses back home, who he cares about, who misses him. Nothing. He hasn't contacted his family in a week and when I offer to let him use my computer at wifi spots he says, “No, they're used to it.” And then something about September 3^rd. I think it's his court date. He claims the statute of limitations on his case runs out on that date but I don't know Canadian law and it seems like this was his way of saying that he got out just in time. I don't know everything he did but if they let him leave the country, maybe it wasn't too bad. Still. Black magic? What the holy hell?

I'm still freaked. Here's why I'm freaked.

I don't have the initial payment from the school yet, so I'm low on money. That should be fixed in the next two days, though.

I'm already in the apartment even though I haven't signed the contract. Moving out won't be hard but I'll have to tell him I don't want to be roommates.

I don't speak Mandarin. If I live on my own, I'm going to have a right crazy time of this place. But maybe that's for the best. I can't walk around holding someone's hand the whole time.

I'll have to pay more for my own apartment, which means more rent and more for the internet. I almost don't even care. Lonely and hanging out with good friends every so often would be better than shacked up with someone that makes your skin crawl.

I told a bunch of the teachers that he's insane. I needed to vent and they were the only people available. He told me all this stuff in confidence and even said, “I'd never say this to anyone at work,” but I've known the guy a grand total of six days. We're not best buds. We are coworkers. But now everyone gets to play the whole game of, “Is Ryan overreacting or is Steve a nut?”

To be fair, this was a prime day for me to freak out. Even without all this, I would have had an episode today. But maybe that episode helped put everything into perspective and open up some issues that I really wouldn't want to have dealt with down the road. I feel bad. I feel really bad about this whole thing.

So tomorrow Sabrina is coming over, pissed I'm sure but what can you do? It's her job to make sure we get good living arrangements. But she's also under pressure to make sure the school retains as much money as possible by having apartments handed over people moved out of hotels and into living situations as soon as possible. And that's what happened here. I let her usher us out of the Hanting Express so quickly that I didn't think too much about what was going on. Everything seemed perfect. And that's what I feel bad about. I'm messing up a good thing for them but it's so not good for me.

Then we're going to find some different apartments. I can't emphasize just how bad this is going to be. I have to tell Steve I don't want to live with him, which I'll soften by just saying I prefer living on my own. He wanted his own place too, so that kind of works out, even though I'm sure he was keen on not paying as much rent. Then I get to tell the directors what's going on and what Steve told me. I feel bad about that, really bad, but I'm not going to be the confidante for crazy.

I was really freaked out. At first it was like, “Ok, you're a conspiracy theorist. Those exist.” Then it was, “I shouldn't tell you this but I have some charges against me.” Follow that up with the whole court/black magic thing and I was sitting on the couch almost having a heart attack. I didn't know what to do. I thought that maybe I could ask him to stop but how do you follow that up? “Please stop. You're making me very uncomfortable. I'm sorry, we can't be roommates,” right when he was pouring his heart out to me? And when your version of “opening up” includes telling the real reason why you came here as hookers and legal problems, Jesus man.

That's something I looked into before coming over. Many westerners hook it to China to live easy and have sex and take advantage of the locals. They're running and they see this as a place of refuge where they can live like jerks. And I don't want to live with that. I don't want to work with that. And the kids should not have someone like that as a teacher.

Going to sleep now. Will update more later. Sorry for the bummer, guys.

August 14^th

I woke up at 5:30 AM, still thoroughly frazzled. I packed everything in my room, paced around biting my nails, and then headed to a place on the corner called Goodway Coffee where I knew they had wifi. My plan there was to order the cheapest thing possible (“Potato and onion” which turned out to be an omelet) and hop online. My laptop wouldn't access but my iPhone did. So I used my phone to reactivate my phone and laptop plans in order to call or text home. Heard familiar voices and even if I am going to owe Verizon a bazillion dollars for international texts, it was worth it to send out my S.O.S., as in:

They haven't paid me the advance yet. They roomed me with a guy that's running from the law. They still haven't given a set date to legalize my stay here. I need to come home.

That was the gist of it. After eating my omelet and letting my family know the situation, I walked off in the opposite direction of the apartment, crossed over a river, and ended up in a gorgeous part of town with trees lining the streets. I sat in the shade while the locals all walked by me staring, and I just breathed in the open air. There was nothing else to do. No one had called me on my Chinese cell. Not a director or the welfare officer or any of the managers. I didn't want to go back to the apartment yet. There was nothing to do.

So I sat there with my backpack and two cell phones, this massive bruise on my arm from the botched blood draw last week where they missed the vein, and my little taxi book that I can use to point out locations to literate drivers. I was almost out of money, exactly halfway around the world from everyone I care about, completely prideless, wondering who cares about me, who I could lean on, who I've wronged, who I want to see again. It was weird because in that little span of time, everything was pretty peaceful.

About an hour later when I did make it back to the apartment, Steve was there. I was about to broach the subject of moving out but he beat me to the punch. His reasoning was that the upstairs neighbors are too noisy and he needs complete silence. I am not kidding. This is a guy that has lived in China before. You do not find complete silence in Chinese cities. As I type this, there are about a hundred women down in the plaza below me doing a flash mob. I just videoed it. And it's been going on for about two hours now. It's not too loud. I have putty earplugs anyway but you just don't find silence here and I kind of like that. There's always something to see or hear, always something going on that you just wouldn't expect. I really like this place, which is why I'm worried. I don't want to leave.

Sabrina showed me a ninth floor suite in a brand new plaza just across from the school's main office. I swear to you, if I close the curtains, I could be in Vegas. It's at the very end of the hall, windows on three sides, more lights than I can count, a bathtub (not something you normally find in China), a security guard downstairs, and a view of the city that is, well, I think this a gesture to right a wrong. It's their way of saying, “Sorry for rooming you with a criminal.” They offered to do the rent in installments, up the cash advance that I still haven't received but that they now guarantee will come tomorrow. I already have cable and there are about two months of internet I can access for free once I hook up a router. But I still haven't unpacked. I'm waiting to meet with the directors tomorrow to see if they will actually make good on the money and really I want to know what's going to happen with Crazy Steve. Did they finally background check him? What did they find? He's not my problem anymore but I don't think the guy should be working with kids.

Here I am, drinking plum juice.

Let's take stock.

I freaked out a bunch of teachers by telling them my roommate is crazy. He is. Here's a horrible sentence: It's weird when someone you don't know tells you that someone else you don't know is a nut even though those two people you don't know don't even know each other. What do you believe? How seriously do you take them?

I freaked out my family and friends.

The teachers I don't know went out of their way to feed and support me.

My family and friends went out of their way to figure out how to get me home.

I turned 29 two weeks ago, all worried about getting older, but I've never felt more helpless or like a child. The end of one of my favorite books, Scholars and Gypsies, has this line: “We are young. We can survive on nothing.” This is not turning out at all like I expected, not life, not this job, not this country, not my friendships, not my own heart. The jet lag coupled with my own deep instincts coupled with my tendency to worry just makes my current decision-making into a boat spinning along in a typhoon.

Right now I'm just going to breathe again. The sun just went down. I'm full of weird gummy plummy gunk and I'm worn out from lugging my stuff across town again.

Pleasant dreams.

August 15^th

Getting the money tomorrow. Everyone is suddenly being really nice, attending to my every need. I think they're really scared of me leaving or whistleblowing. Not sure. Need some feedback. My head is still going in circles and some perspective from other people would be nice.

For clarification, the guy that I was rooming with is from Canada. Apparently he fancies himself a conspiracy theorist and resisted arrest during a routine traffic stop. The director said in the most vague way possible, “Sometimes people say too much and shoot themselves in the foot and end up without a social circle,” referring to Steve. He's not exactly a hardened criminal but trust me when I say this is one of the most unnerving people I've ever met.

On the plus side, I've made several new friends: Kirk and Stefanie (I'm taking over their classes), Jason and Cocoa, both couples, both very supportive and understanding of my situation. They fed me the other night when I left the apartment. Kirk and Stef are from England, Jason and Cocoa from the US.

Supposed to fly to Hong Kong to get my visa legally converted in two weeks. That's pretty common apparently but I'm going to do some more research on it to see if it's legal/possible. Still frazzled and still have my bags packed.

These people are going to have to make good on everything tomorrow or I'm out.

UPDATE: August 20, 2012.

I did get out. And now I have to explain everything that happened after. Guess I have plenty of time now.

Sweat and Wal-Mart

Let's start with yesterday, Friday August the 10th.

I woke up in a hotel. It seems like ages ago. It seems like I was never there. But I woke up in a hotel with access to wifi and an elevator and a leaky sink. The leaky sink was not a good part but I will always remember it as that damned sink that made me shave with the faucet off. I know you're thinking, "Wow, China is rough." My part really isn't but it says something that one of the nicer hotels accepts leaky sinks as fact. It's a hint. It's a thing that should tell you about all the other things I'm about to tell you anyway.

Sabrina called me around 8 or 10 or sometime. Hell, I can't remember now. We hopped a bus to the local quarantine hospital thing where "Your Care Is Our Concerns." Then I did my medical examination.

Here's how it works.

You walk into the lobby. You fill out a form that basically says, "I'm not crazy and I don't have AIDS." There are about eight to ten horizontal slots on the front of the form with pinyin and English side-by-side telling what tests and procedures you will take at each point. Then you're let loose inside the clinic like a rat in a poke-me-and-prod-me maze to complete your scavenger hunt of tests.

The first was the blood draw. Standard. My arm looks like someone punched it because there's a giant bruise where I got poked but it doesn't hurt.

The second was the urine sample. This works differently in China. You don't pee in a cup or flask and then hand it to someone. You pee in a little container that looks like a measuring cup with a spout and then you pour that into a test tube. It makes absolutely no sense other than them simply not wanting to pour the sample themselves. Therefore the bathroom is full of discarded little cups with pee splatter and the accompanying smell everywhere. These clinics are not hygenic.

I forget the actual order from here but next was blood pressure I think. I'd been in China less than 72 hours. I didn't have a phone or a way to work or a bank account (still don't have that last one as of writing this) and I had only eaten sporadically, munching on things I didn't always know of or want. So when the physician pointed to my 143/82 and said "high!" I just pretty much thought whatever. You would have high blood pressure too, lady.

Next, the neck and stomach check. Essentially, it's just groping. I had to relax my stomach and let little fingers poke me all over. Then the guy or girl, hell I can't even remember now, massaged my neck looking for explosive glands or something I'm sure.

X-ray. Actually pretty standard.

Eyesight. Wore my contacts so I was fine.

Ultrasound. Girl rubs jelly all over my stomach and then tickles me with a little proddy thing. I laughed out loud. I couldn't help it. It tickled like crazy. Then she threw paper towels on me and said "finished."

ECG. Clamp little clamps all over me and type stuff on the computer.

So all these people spoke to me in one-word English. "Sit." "Stand." "High." "Finished." They clearly learned enough English to get people in, down, up, and out but not much more. And I'll be completely racist here and say they all looked fourteen years old. It was like getting procedures done by high schoolers in lab coats. I am seriously having trouble discerning people's ages. It's this unexpected thing that's come up since I work with a bunch of Chinese teaching assistants. I know I'll have to grow up myself and get used to it but for now I just can't tell how old people are at all.

So that went fine. Unless sometime this weekend I get a call or knock saying, "Hey Ryan, there's killer evil bacteria in your blood" or "that high blood pressure disqualifies you from teaching little kids" or "you have a giganto liver full of boils." I don't know. I'm sure I'll be fine. Not worried about that.

After that Sabrina and I ate at some very westernized little restaurant that had a thirty page menu which included frog legs, pepper beef spaghetti, ham and cheese sandwiches, and (what I ordered) veggie spaghetti. I didn't use chopsticks to eat the spaghetti. Too. Hard. But I did use chopsticks successfully last night. Getting over that hump pretty quickly.

Then Sabrina turned into crazy rushing everyone lady and got Steve and I to move out of the hotel and into our apartment in like thirty minutes. With just an hour before we had to be at the office, it was no mean feat walking all our stuff from the hotel to our new place, up six flights of stairs. By the time we got to the central office, I was completely drenched in sweat to the point that everyone thought I had fallen in the river or been splashed by a car. Seriously. And the button popped off my khakis. Seriously. I must have looked like the most promising teacher they'd ever seen. Luckily I covered up the absent button with my belt and one of the directors had a spare purple button-up that fit me perfectly. I went into the bathroom and dried myself with toilet paper for ten minutes (still wasn't anywhere close to completely dry) and then went over some boring procedural things.

From there, things got better. Steve and I found out what bus to take to get to the school location. Then we found out there's a shopping mall right across the street from it. Then Kirk (one of the teachers I'm taking over for) took us to the shopping mall where I figured out that my bank card has been frozen with no way of me calling them to fix it until I get internet with Skype or something. I should have called before I flew over and told the bank I'd be in China. They probably saw my ATM stuff from the past week and went, "That guy lives in Texas!" Couldn't change my address because I have no new address to give them. Who calls their bank and says, "I'm going to be temporarily homeless?"

Anyway, Kirk lent me some money right on the spot. He's a great guy. He's actually coming over with Steph, his girlfriend, in a few minutes to give Steve and I some apartment things since that dynamic duo is ending their contract and going back to England. I've been observing both their classes and I'll miss them.

So we took the money and went to Wal-Mart. Yeah. Wal-Mart. In the mall. In Ningbo. There's also a Dairy Queen right next to the Calvin Klein store. I never thought one of the most comforting America-feeling places here would be a shopping mall. It's designed the same. It's full of the same name brand endlessness. It's full of people with bags on their phones walking in little clusters. It's the same. 

Holy Cow, I'm the sweatiest person in Ningbo

Let's just say that going from an arid, sun-beaten hellscape (I'm talking to you, Texas) to a tropical typhoon-ridden sauna makes for some two shower days. One in the morning to wake up, one at night to tame the waterfall that has become my body.

That said, let me see if I can recount this.

10 AM (roundabout): Sabrina, the domestic assistant for us foreign teachers, calls my room because she's downstairs and we have to go do the medical examination and have some professional pictures taken for the work visa. We proceed to hoof it down the street and I think she's going to hail a taxi but no. This woman is a Ningbo native. She navigates the streets like she owns them, walking in front of cars, bikes, ebikes, buses. "I don't know this part of town," she says, as we randomly search streets for a photo shop. Apparently they're common. Unfortunately, they're not common in the part of town where my hotel is located. So we spent a good thirty minutes this side of the river as she asked strangers where to find a photo shop. Then it was a few miles over the bridge and into the city center, which, I must say, is pretty damn Western. At least it's getting there. By Western, I mean Apple stores, KFC, boutiques. All the cookie cutter of home interspersed among the usual craziness.

Oh, and at one point Sabrina saw someone she recognized from school and they chatted it up. Eight million people, hundreds of square miles, and she manages to find an old buddy hanging out on a street corner. It was fantastic.

We waited for the bus for about thirty minutes but apparently its route was cancelled because of standing high water from the typhoon yesterday. It feels like a week ago to me even though it was just yesterday. This place is so fast-paced, one day feels like three or four.

So no bus. It was 11 AM and my appointment at the doctor was 11:30 AM, so we just said screw it. We'll do the pictures, get some lunch, then go grab Steve and look at apartments.

Getting the picture was easy. I took some photos and video there and along the way for the rest of the day.

Then we talked about work and she flat out told me her salary and her relationship with the principal/owner and how she helps teachers from 8 AM - 12 AM every day and does everything everyone needs. It dawned on me pretty quickly that Sabrina is the den mother. She does everything everyone needs, even with a begrudging sigh and humph, but she does it because she cares. It's cute and she said she wants to be friends. Also she's jealous that I'm 29. Apparently that's young.

It didn't take long to look at the apartment. It's very nice on the inside. On the outside, I feel like I'd be living in a tenement but indoors it's actually a little pampered for the standard of living here. Three A/Cs, a washer, two big bedrooms. Fully furnished. If I took it, I'd be rooming with Steve, have super cheap rent at an accessible location and he speaks Chinese, so I'd always have someone to help me with issues without having to call up Sabrina. Also, the previous tenants were teachers at my school and they vouch for the place and the landlord likes foreigners. If I went off by myself, I'd pay more, have to deal with a Chinese landlord on my own, and basically be an island. So as long as he doesn't try to kill me with maple leaves or something, I'm leaning toward a flatmate situation.

After looking at the apartment, we hoofed it a few miles north to the central office and did some orientation. I'm taking over classes from two teachers and I got to talk with them. Kyle and Steph, both Brits. Both very friendly and intelligent and on the last few weeks of their contract. Tonight, I sat in on one of Kyle's classes and actually participated a little. It was really fun - we dealt with the 5-7 age range. Awesome kids, well behaved but also energetic like kids that age are. Taught them words like "bowl" and "spoon" and "I clean my bowl." Also "yucky" and "yummy." I pretended to own a restaurant and the kids had to tell me if my food was good or bad. I think it was about 50/50 but I was only serving milk, soy milk, porridge, and some sort of steamed bun thing.

Parents sit in on the classes, so it gets interesting. Some will stay the entire time but most just sit in on the last ten minutes. That's just for the younger children. With the older kids, their parents come every few weeks or so to observe. But the little ones show off their English skills to their parents every day. Today most of the parents were looking at me because I'm the new teacher. Hope they were at least somewhat impressed.

Took like fifteen minutes to get a cab back home but the fare was only $2. I could cab all over this town.

*Observations*

-smells- Some people in this town smell wonderful. Some areas of this town smell awful. But the smells are always different. You don't smell the same awful thing over and over. You smell many different kinds of disgusting. But then there's suddenly a person standing too close to you and they have some magnificent perfume or cleaner or something that makes you go, "Wow, what do you use to wash your clothes?" I couldn't say that in Chinese but I might.

-traffic- Horns are not for anger here. They're communication. Horns are all "I'm coming through" or "Watch out, I'm in this lane." I haven't seen road rage here at all like I thought I would. It's just people trying to get through. And everyone understands that everyone is trying to go somewhere, so they're all cool about it. Nobody gets pissy in traffic, maybe because there is nothing BUT traffic on the roads.

-crossing the street- Frogger. Some people slow down. Some people don't. If someone's clearly not going to slow down, you don't go. If someone shows the least amount of hesitation and lets off the gas for you, you go. If there's six lanes of traffic between you and your destination, you just walk and stop and walk and stop. You don't need a crosswalk or anything. You just have to watch the cars and bikes. Also, traffic cops randomly pick intersections to blow their whistles in. I only saw two intersections today with traffic cops and even there they seemed pretty useless.

-freakouts- Steve has lived in three different cities in China and he's freaking out here because he's afraid of teaching kids. I think it's funny because I've never lived in China and that's what's freaking me out. Give me a classroom full of kids, no matter what language they speak, and I'll be at home. Slap me down in the middle of a country where I don't speak the language well and I don't know anyone and THAT'S a good reason to freak out. But I reassured him. Poor guy is worried about impressing the parents.

-PDA- Couples lean on each other when they walk. That's as far as it goes. But there are a lot of them.

-"Hello!"- Chinese people love to randomly walk up to me on the street and say hello. One was a kindly old man that welcomed me to the country. One was a kid trying to impress his friends and make a girl giggle.

-Communication- Every interaction takes longer than you think it would. Ordering food at a restaurant is not a case of, "I want a #2 with cheese." Every little hole-in-the-wall has their own list and recipe and methods and from what I can tell you have to grill them a little about how it's made and what's in it and how much there is before actually ordering. You don't just pick out food.

-Bikes with horns- Walk on the sidewalk for a hundred yards and at least three or four bikes will sneak up behind you, horns honking. You have to listen for it but it's not tough to get used to. I just have to remind myself that cars aren't the only ones blasting to get through.

-girls- Yes, Chinese girls love American guys. I think I could only be friends with them though because even the older ones have this tendency to act like they're twelve. It's a cultural thing. They think immaturity is attractive, so it's not weird to hear women throwing tantrums in public. Not to say that's common but when you have a country full of only children, you can imagine what happens.

Holy Cow, I Can Actually See a Blue Sky (the morning after the typhoon)

It's pretty wild that my school organized a get-together for Steve (the other new teacher) and I during the worst storm Ningbo has had in 56 years. But that's what they did.

I flew in from DFW to Vancouver on the 5th and then went from Vancouver to Shanghai on the 6th, crossing the International Date Line, landing on the 7th. It was an eleven hour flight with around 250 people, about 50 or 60 of which were children. And not a single one of them acted up. And wow, Chinese kids are well behaved. There was no crying, fussing, screaming, running, anything. Not once did any of those kids have to be restrained on an eleven hour flight. I am amazed. That also gives me hope for my classroom.

So I went through TSA, Canadian customs, Chinese customs and immigration. It was actually a cakewalk. Carried the Ripstik through and everything without a problem. I expected some sort of hangup, a speedbump or something, but there wasn't one.

At least not until I got to China and then realized no one was there waiting for me.

Imagine you've been awake for over 24 hours. You're exhausted, sweaty, lugging a huge suitcase with a heavy backpack hanging off your shoulders, and there's a sea of people waiting at the gate. A lot of them are holding signs. And you walk through them like a gauntlet looking for your name. And your name isn't there. Ok, you must have missed it, right? You're tired, hazy. You must have missed it.

So you exit the gauntlet into the open air of the Meeting Point, which is a lot of benches, a few phones, and a couple of hawkers selling calling cards for the phones. And then you hear someone yell at you in English, "Hey! Hey! Where are you going!" Sounds urgent, right? Sounds official. Nope, it's someone trying to sell you a phone card.

Now imagine you spend the next hour going back-and-forth from the gauntlet to the meeting point, leaning over to see if the names on the signs have changed, sweating more, getting dizzy from lugging everything around. But still no one.

It was at that point I pulled out my contact's phone number. I would call him collect. I didn't care. Someone had forgotten me. Despite a dozen tries, I couldn't operate a Chinese pay phone. The instructions in English were very clear and didn't work at all. "Pick up, wait 5 seconds for the tone, and dial." I fumbled around with that thing for a while and then a girl walking by asked if I needed to make a call, so I said yes. And she pointed me to the hawkers. Fine, screw it. I'll buy a stupid calling card. I don't care anymore.

50 RMB. Sounds like a lot, right? And there was a convenient ATM right next to their booth. I withdrew 100 RMB and paid and got exactly 50 back (no tax) and took my calling card to the phones. It showed the credit on the screen and I figured out how to put the display in English and it still didn't work. I couldn't operate a telephone. Luckily, 50 RMB comes out to about $7.50. To put that in better perspective, I bought lunch for myself and Steve yesterday as a thank you to him for ordering for us (he speaks Chinese) and our combined bill came to 24 RMB, or yes, about $3.75, give or take. Need a taxi across downtown? 5 or 10 RMB, depending. Yes, two dollars for a taxi ride.

But I digress.

It was at that point I decided maybe I should just ask one of the white guys coming through the gauntlet if they had cell service or wifi. I was considering all the implications of being stuck in a country where I didn't know the language and if I ended up having to tell the people at the airport, I would have gotten myself deported for coming over on an invitational visa without actually meeting the person who invited me.

After two hours I was nearly done. Planned on falling asleep at the Meeting Point and figuring it out when I woke up. But then through my limited focus, I saw a short man in a black shirt with a little folded paper that I swore had my name on it. He was wandering between the Meeting Point and the gauntlet. It could have been me just hallucinating but I had to get up and check. Then I lost him. Then I wandered for fifteen minutes or so and saw him again. His paper did have my name on it. I wanted to hug that guy.

His name is Kevin and he owns the school where I'm working. Technically he owns four schools. We rode three hours from Shanghai to Ningbo. I got set up with a hotel room and then crashed for a solid six hours.

Then the typhoon.

Let me tell you, the people in this city are troopers. Worst storm in 56 years? They don't care. The taxi drivers don't care. They drive through the streets like they're in hovercraft. Getting a ride from the hotel to the local expatriate bar for the late afternoon group meetup, our taxi driver stopped in a lake to air up his tires. I was wondering how water wasn't coming in through my door. And since the driver's face didn't match the picture on the dangling license, Steve and I presumed he wasn't the normal driver but the guy's cousin or something.

Anyway, I got to meet the hard core group, the ones that braved typhoon weather to meet and greet us. Mostly Canadians, mostly from Ottowa, though I did meet one guy from Chicago. One from Portland and he identified me as an Austinite because of my skinny jeans. Apparently the only Texans he meets out East are from Austin and I believe that.

The expat bars are in the upscale part of town. When you think "upscale" you have to think in relative terms. "Upscale" here is more like "normal" back home. If it looks like a building that's regularly cleaned and has toilets, you're in a classy place. The cool part is, there are five star hotels here and for about 100 or 200 RMB, $15 - $30, you can eat a five star buffet of western foods. That's considered splurging. I actually heard one guy complaining about how the price of something here double from 1 RMB to 2. That's going from 15 cents to 30. I mean really guys.

The expat places are comforting and a little bit of a tease at the same time. Walk into one and you could be at any bar in the States or UK or Australia. Pool tables, Guinness banners, urinals, Budweiser. These are the places where the forlorn and homesick and frustrated go to ignore or take a break from the outside Chinese world. And I can't blame them. It's hectic and wild out there.

We all met up, had a round and then went to get some Sichuan. Actual Sichuan. Like me fumbling with chopsticks and burning my mouth Sichuan. Eggplant? Amazing. I've never tried it before. And the rumors of Chinese food being overspiced? Sort of true. It's nothing spicier than I've eaten before. Also, since we're really in middle China, there's rice and noodles served in equal supply. So far the food's really good. Kevin, the school owner, wants me to try some sort of rice wrapped in bamboo leaves. I keep forgetting what it's called but apparently it's an initiation food for new teachers.

That said, I got in at about ten last night after finishing a round and playing a few games of pool. Today I have to forego breakfast because I have a medical exam. I get blood drawn and all that good stuff - also, an ultrasound for some reason. I hope I'm not pregnant.

Then I get to look at an apartment. Then I get lunch. Then I observe a few classes (I still haven't been TO the school yet).


*Observations*

-the metric system- I have to convert everything. The air conditioner is on Celcius. The distances are in kilometers. Thanks, America, for not preparing me for this.

-money- Because the denominations are like 10 and 20 and 50 RMB, I always feel like I'm spending more than I am. Walking around a shop, the price tags read 4 and 5 and 6 like at any store in the US and my mind still thinks I'm looking at dollars. So when Steve pointed out that my bottled water would cost 5 a piece, I was like, "God that's expensive." No, no it's not. Two 2 liter bottles of water (can't drink from the tap) cost a combined 10 RMB or about $1.50.

-people- People stare. For two reasons I can tell so far. One, I'm not Chinese. Two, I speak loudly and in English. Some of the Canadians are so soft spoken that I feel like a walking megaphone. Also, there's a lot of uninhibited expression: people yelling, shouting, singing in the street. I guess it's not that odd but I don't know what people are saying, so I find myself wondering if they're yelling, shouting, singing at me.

-traffic- Jesus hell. There is no pedestrian right of way. People park on the sidewalks. And last night, when the traffic and water level in the street had finally died down, I saw a guy driving backwards down the road. Back-wards.

-hygiene- I wash my hands and brush my teeth a lot and I'm going to just carry around sanitizer. I haven't seen any egregious offenders, like people pooping in the street (which happens, just not in this part of town I'm sure), but the big thing is that I'm in a new country. There are germs here my body has never encountered. Regardless of what's clean and what's not, I'm exposed to it. It could be Japan or Thailand or South Africa. This is just not my town yet. And it's full of people. Like six to eight million people. So I'm going to be careful there.

-loneliness- I miss everyone back home. I miss everyone I didn't even really hang out with back home. It's amazing how this distance and lack of access puts everything in perspective. I have to make friends here, find my own group, and thank the wonderful universe for my VPN that gets around China's firewall to allow me to use Facebook. I don't care what you say about it now, without Facebook and access to my friends through their pictures and updates and chat, this transition would suck. It means a lot knowing you're all there.