China has been amazing for this past week; the honeymoon phases strides on full force no brakes necessary the time being. I've found myself lost in translation quite a bit, yet this has not deterred my experiences. A lot has happened in the past week and I could go on and on about it....so I will
I have still yet to do my grocery shopping, though going out to lunch with mates and having the fabulous cuisine of fellow expatiates I have been able to maintain a steady diet aside from my beer/cigarette candy intake (and I've already lost 5 lbs so let's hope that keeps rolling with my exclusive beer diet lol). My smoking habits have been fucking awful...it's rather hard when cigarettes are less than a buck fifty a pack! It also doesn't help you can smoke wherever you damn well please, and you can get to go beers and drink in public. Jesus, it's like a paradise...for the time being (cheers to that). Some things never change though, such as my addiction to nicotine and caffeine. It'll change, or so it goes.
Work has been smooth so no real complaints on that front yet. I love working with the kids and playing games, it really does warm my soul seeing those little ones get so excited whenever I introduce them to a new game. We call this edutainment (and apparently that's a real word according to blogger) over here and the kids go crazy for it and unlike teaching in high school you actually feel like the kids are having a love for learning: these kids go to school all week and are drilled with boring activities and once a week they get to spend time with crazy ol uncle Drew while he plays games with em and continues the love of learning.
This past Sunday, the 7th of September, I went to an expatiate bar with some work mates and this was my first experience of the Dalian night life...I was reminded with full force the celebrity status bestowed upon me simply because of my white American skin. I had been social with some folks before this outing, yet this was my first time immersing myself with the locals and getting pissed with my coworkers. For a few minutes, I drank my long forgotten white russian (which always perpetuates a crazy night I may add!) and soon I had a couple of Chinese girl come up to me and begin to flirt with me. For all of my straight dude friends back in the states, we can all agree this shit never happens with White women. My friends who know me I have plenty of arrogant confidence, but when it comes to actually instigating conversations with women I am normally lackluster and freeze up with where to bring the conversation..which is mostly due to the fact I'm a huge fucking nerd and my hobbies include video games and writing, two things that are normally difficult in striking compelling converse unless the said female in the situation also fancies these nerdy activities. Regardless, I was overtaken with bewilderment that these girls were absolutely fascinated simply because I was an American and the fact I was a teacher allowed for me to talk about myself (something that isn't hard for this arrogant bastard...after all I am writing a bloody blog which is in itself me jerking myself on the internet for all to view). Over here in China, teaching is a profession that is respected much more so than in the states. I still have no game, for sure, but I'm still that funny guy with a passion for writing and apparently that goes a long way. I could go on and on about how cool I think I am, but let us continue on to the following section.
I want to end this post on perceptions. Back home in America, I'm just some white guy, I may be a damn funny white guy who many people love, but there are millions of people who look and sound just like me. Not the case here in Dalian. There are several people I have met who have never met an American before, and they think I'm cool as shit just because they have only heard my accent in movies or television shows, and although many of the Chinese people I've met can barely understand when I'm talking, they are still fully engaged in the stories I tell despite not being able to truly follow along. I see China as the land of opportunity, whereas these Chinese folks think America is the land of the free and their country is oppressing them. What's funny is neither of us is wrong, both countries have their faults and both countries have opportunities. When you're in a place for long enough, you begin to see all that is wrong with it and begin to believe anything will be better. That is one of the main reasons I came to China and surely I will be homesick in due time, but for the time being I am glad I now live in a country where my religion and political ideologies are the norm instead of being labeled as some crazy godless socialist. I also enjoy getting drunk with my American buddies over here because for all of you who really know me, I love to complain about the American government and if I did that with anyone who isn't American, I would lose face and that would be a tragedy within of itself.
I could write about many more things, but I don't want to talk too much about work or anything so I can save some material for my following blog post. So look out next week during the middle of the week as I continue my plunge into writing about myself and my travels.
P.S. I outta take more pictures, but I'm not a picture kind of guy. I promise by like October or something I'll buy a digital camera to accompany my posts, but I don't always keep my promises especially ones made on the internet so we shall see what happens.
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