What Was I Thinking?!?

Photos: Beijing

godohell — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:43:00 GMT

Beijing

9 DAYS!!!!!!!!!

godohell — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:25:00 GMT

I am so super stoked. You have no idea.

Beijing was great. We got there Thursday night and had a bitch time trying to find our hostel as it was out in the middle of nowhere. Friday we climbed the Great Wall. There's a Chinese saying that if you haven't climbed the Great Wall, you're not a real man. Well, that day I became a real man. Joy of all joys, climbing a wall magically switched my gender. Then we went to see two of the thirteen Ming Tombs. They were kinda interesting, but I think after you see fifty billion temples, they all start looking the same. Then we went to our second hostel, checked in and waited for my buddy, John, to show up. He's Chinese and was our interpreter for the rest of the trip. The next morning we saw the Forbidden City and Tienanmen square. We had Peking duck. It was pretty tasty. Then, that night we all went to a street which was covered with bars. There were people outside of the bar who were being really pushy trying to get us inside. It made me uncomfortable, but we still had fun. The next day was our last day. We were going to see the Summer Palace but we got lost and ended up at a park with old ruins in it. It was still cool, but I really wanted to see the palace. Then we also saw the Temple of Heaven. That was pretty especially with the sun setting over the ancient buildings. Then, we high-tailed it to the airport where we promptly missed our plane home and had to buy a new ticket. That sucked, but it was hilarious watching us running up three flights of escalators to try to catch a plane that had just taken off.

Last week, the Americans showed up. They brought me mac 'n' cheese, hummus, pita bread, and Starbursts. I love them. It was so great to see Shawn and Casey! I missed them a lot! It's so super boring here with out them or Thu or Du老师 or any of the other Americans who were rad. During that time we got to see the Peking opera. The first half was unbearable because they were screeching but the second half was cool because it was about these guys fighting each other. We also had a huge party where everyone got drunk and ate food and stuff. It was crazy fun. I did not drink, but I was still having fun being a spaz.On another note, last weekend I bought some books to help me study Chinese. I think they'll be really useful. I also bought some CDs so I could listen to real Chinese music. I like them a lot. They're mostly pop but some of the songs are really catchy. We also saw a dead guy on the sidewalk. That was super traumatizing. We had just eaten lunch and were walking out of the restaurant and there was a guy laying in a very strange way on the sidewalk near a staircase. He was wearing a coat with the hood up so it only exposed his face from the nose down, but he was Chinese, his face was purple-ish blue, and there was blood. I still have nightmares about it. So that sucks.

Today is my last day of giving finals. I only had one dumbass student who didn't show up for the first one or his make-up, so he's the only one I have to fail. WOO! Now I just have to worry about my final exam on Tuesday and my presentation on Thursday. THEN I'M GONNA BE HOME! I'm super frackin excited! SO EXCITED OMG OMG OMG. I CAN'T HARDLY STAND IT.

Still Not Dead

godohell — Tue, 1 Dec 2009 15:14:00 GMT

So I'm still alive. I've just been very reluctant to type as I've become super jaded and don't want to upset/jade others with my negativity.

Beijing was awesome. Pictures are up (some of them... ran out of bandwidth so I need to delete some of my Germany pictures so you can see them). I'll talk more about that later.

This week, I get to see my American friends. I missed them dearly. I'm giving finals next week. Week after that are my finals. Week after that I'll be home and happy (finally). God, three weeks have never seemed more like an eternity.

Week From Hell

godohell — Tue, 3 Nov 2009 11:12:00 GMT

I realized how I stopped posting and all so I figured I'd take some time out of my VERY BUSY SCHEDULE to write something. Just kidding. My schedule's full-ish, but nowhere near as busy as I make it seem. It's just a bit like pulling teeth sometimes if only because I am running out of things to teach and I've still got two months left. It's starting to worry me. Eventually classes will consist of me staring at them for a few hours and them staring back at me. It'll be the most riveting class ever!

Monday I had a bit of a mental breakdown because of that. It sucked. I canceled classes for that day. I told them my stomach and head was bothering me. My stomach was bothering me, but that was from stress. Or so I thought. Tuesday went without a hitch, until about eight or so that night when I started getting stomach cramps. I thought it was just my monthly curse from hell, which part of it was, but this was a little different. I took some Mydol and went to bed only to wake up at midnight in such severe agony I could barely stand it. I was freezing despite my nice, warm comforter, a space heater on full blast, and pajamas to keep me warm. It hurt to wear clothes and I couldn't even lay still for more than a few minutes before my whole body started aching and my stomach twisted in new knots. The next day I went to class to try to teach, but I could barely walk to class. It was an effort to stand. So I let them out halfway through class telling them I would go to the doctor. So I got to go to a Chinese hospital.

Now, it might have been serious enough to have taken me to an American hospital, but here's the thing: there are no plain, regular doctors in China. If you're sick, anywhere from a little bitty cold to your arm being severed, you're going to the hospital. We got there and it was mass chaos. It was crazy. We had to pay to be seen by a doctor, something minimal like 4 yuan. Then Lili, our helper, described my symptoms to the doctor. Then we went to get an X-ray and my blood drawn. That was 35 yuan. I hated having my blood drawn. Basically, as my buddy, Josh, said in his journal previously, you just stick your hand through a window like you would see at a pharmacy, they stab you with a needle, make your finger bleed and get some of that on this tiny little stick. It made me unhappy. Then we went back and he looked at the stuff and sent us upstairs to a gut doctor who said he wanted to do more tests, but I was so tired that I just wanted to go home, so Lili refused on my behalf, we got some medicine and went home. I got to chill out the rest of the day. Now, you might be saying, "Rebecca, you should've had those tests done. Now you don't know what's wrong with you exactly." Well, lemme explain. A lot of those doctors are looking to extort money out of you by running tests they might not actually think you need. Besides, I'm an American and in their mind I am very rich and can afford to cough up all the yuan they want me to.

So then the rest of the week, I used this as an excuse to let my classes out super early. I was still getting stomach pains up until two or so days ago and I was so tired that I thought it would be okay. No one's complained yet.

Anyways, the medicine they gave me seems to have worked, but I just finished them this morning. We'll see how that goes.

Oh and my ex-boyfriend's a jackass. I feel that I need to proclaim this publicly because I'm super pissed off at him right now. I think I should maybe give an explanation. We broke up before I left. It was pretty much mutual. We had been together one year. I leave. He gets a girlfriend who is still in high school two months later. Now, that pissed me off because it made me feel like I was easily replaceable, but I shrugged it off mostly because I was like, "Well, whatever. He's still a kid. I'll just make sure to take him off my phone plan when I get back to the states." That was pre- his biggest jackassery.

Before I left, he told me that he was sure that he could still handle his part of the rent in China. I asked him about five hundred times if he was sure. I said each of those times, "Are you sure? Because I don't want to be stuck in China and find out that I have to get money to Lindsey to cover your part of the rent because you decided to ditch us at the last second. I'll be in CHINA and I don't know how easily I'd be able to do that. I need to know now while I'm in AMERICA so that I can cover this." He always said, "Yeah. Yes. Don't worry about it." MOTHER FUCKER. You can see where this is going, I'm sure. I just got word from my lovely roomie, Linz, that this jackass isn't going to pay rent this month. He's not in school; he's not working. He's not doing fucking anything. And he tried to get her to borrow money for him. FUCKER STILL OWES MY FRIEND, AARON, SOMETHING LIKE $200. And now I'm stuck trying to figure out how to either get the money out of him or kick him out without him stealing the stuff I want to keep. Linz is hiding my preciousness as I type this. I'm pissed.

Luckily, what I'm losing to his jackassery, I'm sort of making up in that they offered me and Tyler (just me and Tyler, by the way) extra classes to teach. We'll be paid about 200 yuan each week for our services. That'll maybe cover part of his fuck up, but at least it's something. Hopefully, the next time I post, it will be a little happier. Oh! BEIJING'S COMING UP AND I'M SUPER EXCITED! WOO!

And thanks to Linz for the package! <3 you!!

Beijing Bound

godohell — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:24:00 GMT

November 19th thru November 22nd Marisa, Sarah and I will be in Beijing. We rescheduled our trip, which was going to be next weekend specifically because we heard some of our dork friends were going to be there about that time. Just sayin...

National Holiday (Finally)

godohell — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:12:00 GMT

Finally, I have the time (and motivation) to write the entry on National Holiday. I actually really don't have much motivation other than I am super bored, I don't feel like studying, I can't register for winter classes yet, and I'm a little upset (will be addressed later) so here it goes:
As I said before, National Holiday had its ups and downs. We spent a day traveling to Qingdao. We took a ferry to Yantai, which was cool. It had a nice common room where we spent most of our time. I got some nice coffee and we played Rummy and Euchre. Yantai was a pain in the ass. We had to try to find the bus station. We ended up at the train station and had to walk twenty minutes to the bus station. We got there just in time to catch the three hour bus to Qingdao. Unfortunately for us, this bus dropped us off on the opposite side of the city from where our hostel was. So we wandered around until we caught a public bus that got us near to where we were supposed to be. We finally found our hostel and got everything taken care of. Marisa, Sarah, and I stayed in a room with nine other people. It was very unpleasant. Marisa and I wimped out the next night and ended up getting a much nicer hotel. Oh well.

Qingdao was pretty cool. We got to tour the TsingTao brewery. Qingdao was a German-occupied port for a while so homesick Germans founded the brewery and when they left, they just handed it over to the Chinese. Everyone got to taste free beer. I gave mine to Marisa. We also went to the Lennon bar, a Beatles themed bar that had a live Chinese band who played classic American rock, like CCR, Led Zeppelin, and Bon Jovi. They even played all 9 minutes of Free Bird. The food was awesome too. Most of the time we were in Qingdao we spend just wandering around and exploring. I wish we could've seen more interesting things, but alas, nothing. I also didn't get to see Josh near enough. Poor planning on our part. So we stayed in Qingdao three or four days (I'm still too lazy to figure it out right now), Josh left a day before we did (sad panda), then we went to Tai'an.

We got up early to catch a train to Tai'an, which is at the foot of Taishan, which is basically Mt. Tai. Our hostel in Tai'an was a million times better. It was beautiful. Coby ended up losing his coat and his bank card by leaving it on the train. Dumbass. Anyways, we climbed the mountain the first day we were there. It was 6,666 steps of pure agony, but now I can say I climbed one of the more famous mountains in China. Well, according to the Chinese, it's famous. Okay, well, we climbed up halfway and took a ski lift to the top, and then we climbed down halfway before taking a bus the rest of the way down, but still. It sucked. Before I climbed that beast, we went to the Dai Temple, which was pretty, but at this point all of the temples I am visiting are starting to look the same. Also, we ate street food, which was super bad for us, but super delicious.

The next day we went to Qufu, which is Confucius' hometown. That was cool. We got to see where Confucius did all his business, where his family lived, and finally his grave. His cemetery was much prettier than anything I've ever seen in China. It was green with rolling mounds where bodies were buried. Their tombstones were tall and interesting and it was just so peaceful there. Minus the over-sized golf carts zooming around giving tours to lazy people. That night we went back to Qingdao. The train ride was long and fairly uneventful, but the cab we tried to take back had no idea where he was going so we almost missed our check-in time.

Our last day in Qingdao was pretty cool. We basically spent it drinking and playing cards. We got to meet some pretty cool Chinese people. I got to talk to some Swiss people in German and I made friends with a Danish girl named Stence. She was awesome. The trip home was a bitch. It seemed to take forever. We got to Yantai, where we would catch our ferry back home, at 10 in the morning. We didn't get back here until almost 10 at night. It was so long. And the ferry ride sucked nuts because the common area was closed so we had to stay in our rooms and try to play cards. LAME. But that was basically it. Nothing much to it.

Near the end of November, I'm going to Beijing. I figured you all would kill me if I went to China and didn't even see the Great Wall, so I'm making a special trip for it. :) I'll keep you guys updated.

Oh yeah. The reason I'm upset: One of the students I've been talking to named Devil told me he loved me last night. That basically freaked me out. A) We text. We almost never talk in person unless I call on him in class. B)No way he loves me. He's known me less than two months C) He has a girlfriend. WTF. So I'm not sad upset or angry. I'm just confused and frustrated because I'm at a complete loss for words. I don't know what to tell him. So last night I just told him that I was tired and that we should talk tomorrow. He just replied, "Maybe. Goodnight." So I'm so weirded out I don't know what to do. UGH. Boys are so stupid!

Gallery: Qingdao, Taishan, Qufu

godohell — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:23:00 GMT

National Holiday!

WOO! I'm back!

godohell — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:12:00 GMT

So National Holiday had its ups and downs. But we're back and safe and I am oh so happy to shower in a place that forty other people haven't showered in already. I'll fill you all in on all of the details later, but right now I'll give you all just a brief outline because I just woke up, I'm still tired, and I have to figure out what I am teaching today. I think I decided to surprise them with a quiz. Yeah. I'm that mean. :)

So we spent a day traveling to Qingdao which sucked ass because all I wanted to do was to get there and see Josh. We got there at like 10 at night so I was pissed because that was one less day we got to see him. We stayed in Qingdao three or four days (I'm too lazy to figure it out right now), Josh left a day before we did (sad panda), then we went to Tai'an. Tai'an is at the foot of Taishan, which is basically Mt. Tai. We climbed it. It was 6,666 steps of pure agony, but now I can say I climbed one of the more famous mountains in China. Well, according to the Chinese, it's famous. The next day we went to Qufu, which is Confucius' hometown. That was cool. That night we went back to Qingdao. Yesterday we came home. There will be pictures posted on Picasa just shortly after I finish this post, but I have a few on this website as well. In total, between me and the two guys, we got 1,004 pictures... something like that. I think I went through and deleted some of them because they turned out like shit, but whatever. Point is, there are many pictures. It was fun.

More later. :)

Qingdao Ho!

godohell — Mon, 5 Oct 2009 08:22:00 GMT

We're leaving today. I still need to pack, hence me being up at the crack of 6:30 am. I don't know that I will be able to post. I'm still waffling about bringing my laptop or not seeing as we're staying in hostels and I'm not positive that I really want to bring my laptop with me for all of the activities we're planning on doing. But I should at least get lots of pictures and I should be able to post them when I get back at the very least.

AND I GET TO SEE JOSH PATTERSON! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I am very excited to see my good friend. Wish us luck!

Gallery: Golden Beach

godohell — Fri, 2 Oct 2009 14:31:00 GMT

Pretty sand

Gallery: Henshan Temple

godohell — Fri, 2 Oct 2009 14:27:00 GMT

Temple with big Buddha

Gallery: Ocean Division Line Park

godohell — Fri, 2 Oct 2009 14:24:00 GMT

The lighthouse in Lushun

OMG SRSLY BAD IDEA

godohell — Fri, 2 Oct 2009 11:19:00 GMT

Okay. I'll be upfront. I'm really effin hungover. Like super bad. It sucks. But there's a story behind it. Well, kind of. Basically, it's boring as nuts here.

It's National Holiday. WOO! No more teaching! But that also means all of the students leave to go home and see their families. Aw how nice. Except we Americans are stuck here with no one to see and nothing to do (until we get to go see Josh YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). So yesterday, I got pissed off at being bored and said, "You know what sounds like an interesting idea? Playing Brandy Pong at two in the afternoon. I've never done that before." For those of you who are unfamiliar with Brandy Pong, basically all you do is switch the beer in Beer Pong with brandy and orange Fanta. I was drunk before three thirty. I managed to stay up until seven or eight last night, passed out, and woke up at midnight wishing death upon myself. Some crazy shit ensued though.

We have a bar on the roof of the hotel that you can use at will. You BYOB and then have fun. So after beer pong, we went outside on to the unenclosed portion of the roof. It has a metal bar railing surrounding it. The major problem: most of the bars are super rusty. I accidentally broke one off. We have pictures. Then we chucked it off the roof. After that we had dinner in the cafeteria. It was spicy chicken. At least I assumed it was spicy. There were pepper-looking things in the mix. I'm pretty sure everyone else there knew we were toasted. Especially since we never finish all of the food they serve us, but this time it was demolished. It was decided after that that we all wanted to get food from some of the carts that normally line the sides of the streets. Chicken hearts are my favorite. So we headed out and ran into the students that Sarah had made plans with and then canceled because of my drunk ass. They had brought her home-made dumplings. They let me have some. They were delicious. BEST JIAOZIs (pinyin for dumpling) EVER. So we headed off to get the street food and realized that, because all of the effin students left, so did the vendors. LAME. So then we went to the beach for a bit and then back to the hotel where we tried watching Starsky and Hutch. I realized it was time to go to bed when I noticed how often I was nodding off during the movie.

Fast forward to midnight: It was either the spicy chicken or the acidic brandy that got to me first. After twenty minutes of worshiping porcelain, I managed to pass out back in bed where I woke up at seven thirty to some Chinese fuckers yelling at the top of their lungs for no reason and Marisa trying to wake me up for breakfast. I promptly but politely told Marisa to 'fuck off' and tried to go back to sleep. Enter the rooster. FUCKING ROOSTER. I will find it and kill it before I leave. You mark my words. So now I really just want to go to Taco Bell and get that burrito Dad always recommends for hangovers, but I'm pretty sure Taco Bell hasn't migrated over here yet. BLURGH.

I'll try to get the roof pictures up soon. In other news, I'll be leaving for Qingdao soon. I don't know how much internet access I'll have available to me, but I'll post as soon as I can.

Oh, and Dad, if you're reading this, the random withdrawals of $147 is for tuition. :) I know you worry about me financially and I know I've not been too up on that in the past, but I assure you, I'm doing okay.

I Am Cyrano de Bergerac

godohell — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:42:00 GMT

For those of you who do not get the reference in my title, please allow me to explain. There is a play called Cyrano de Bergerac. The hero of the story is, you guessed it, Cyrano de Bergerac. He was in love with a pretty lady named Roxanne, but he had a big nose and thusly many people thought he was very ugly. Thus he never went after Roxanne, despite being an amazing duelist and poet, etc. Roxanne is in love with Cyrano's buddy, Christian. Christian, however, is not very eloquent, so Cyrano offers to write poetry to her for him. They both end up going to war and Christian dies. However, Cyrano somehow doesn't realize this or whatever and keeps writing her letters. Roxanne finds out and falls in love with Cyrano but just as they're about to get together, Cyrano somehow dies. I learned this story from Wishbone, by the way. I didn't realize Cyrano died in the end until I looked it up the other day. Wishbone doesn't cover the tragic endings as much.

Anyways, I've got a thing for the American fella here, Coby. It's stupid and I'm pissed off at myself for it, but the Chinese fellas are too scared of my gun rack to show more interest in me, so whatever. The problem is that he's super attracted to my Chinese friend, Gabriella. So I've been playing Cyrano in trying to talk him up to Gabriella and giving him hints as to what to say. I've been encouraging him, for fuck's sake. "Don't give up. Language barriers aren't that bad. Go for it!" The whole time I'm doing that, I'm kicking myself because that's the exact opposite of what I want. However, I'm pretty sure I don't have a snowball's chance in hell of him finding me attractive, so I figured I'd just flirt my ass off while still giving him encouragement to go after Gabriella. I don't think he even realizes that I like him. Part of me likes that because then we can be friends and he can talk to me and I won't have to worry about it being all awkward and stuff, but I hate it because I don't want him to like Gabriella, but I do. UGH. BOYS ARE SO FUCKING STUPID. >:(

The point of this whole rant is for me to pose a question to my American man friends: Should I just grow a pair and tell him how I feel? Or should I just let him go after Gabriella? If you were Coby, would you want to know?

Soon To Be National Holiday

godohell — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 23:32:00 GMT

HA! You thought I had given up on my blogging again, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU?!? You know what I'm talking about, coworkers.

Not much has been going on . I've been teaching and learning, eating, sleeping, listening to music. Teaching's a pain in the ass sometimes. My students are as responsive as a person in a coma. I'm pretty sure there's a heartbeat and sometimes they even blink, but for the most part they do as little as possible. Some classes are exceptions. I like those. We had fun in one of them today. I taught them how to play Heads Up, 7 Up. It was crazy cool.

Coming up is a national holiday. We are traveling to QingDao and TianShan and Confucius's hometown. It should be interesting. TianShan is actually a mountain. We shall be climbing it. If I die, I will all of my preciousness to my mei mei, Haley. Mei mei, for you non-pin-yin-readers, is pin yin for little sister. But the reason I mention it is because there should be pictures.

Also speaking of pictures, I posted some new ones with us just messing around Dalian with some of our Chinese friends. They're cute. I hope to get more soon. :) I also realized I didn't take pictures of where I am living so I'll try to get around to that... eventually.

Other than that, not much has been going down. I'm now obsessed with The Strokes, thanks to Tyler for giving me their music. I didn't realize how many of their songs I've heard before. Um... Yeah. Oh yeah. Last thing: Grilled chicken hearts are delicious. Grilled silk worm chrysalis (silkworm babies) is not.

Good Morning, China!

godohell — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 09:55:00 GMT

Fuck roosters, dude. We're in the city. They should not be crowing me awake at 6:30 in the morning. Or at 2:00 in the afternoon. Dicks.

Anyways, China's okay. I still feel stupid, but I've been hanging out more and more with Chinese girls, so that's super cool. The main ones are Vera, Victoria, and Gabriela. There's a guy named Endless (he's very cute) that we like hanging out with too, but it's mostly us girls. I think guys are scared of me. It's kinda hilarious actually. The way people stare at me, you'd think they've never seen a white girl before... Oh wait... ;)

Teaching is going... okay. Most of the classes are full of people who don't want to learn English, but there are a few who are so good that the poor things are very bored. I'm at a loss. And the textbook they gave us to teach is so difficult. I feel like none of them would understand the books if I taught them. I'm completely drowning in it. The worst part is that I can't get them to talk to me. I'll ask a question and know that they know the answer, but they won't tell me. GRRRRR. On an upside, there are a lot of cute boys in my classes. LOL

This past weekend was a mixed one. Saturday sucked monkey nuts. We were supposed to get a tour of Dalian City, like the big downtown part that's huge and full of interesting things to do. Instead, they dumped five Americans in the middle of it all with no one to point out interesting things, to help interpret when we didn't know the Chinese, or to help us order food that we'd want. Poor Coby ended up spending 60 yuan on something he couldn't eat because there was mayonnaise on it. It was bullshit. So we ended up wandering around Dalian for six fuckin hours in the hot sun doing absolutely nothing but looking at underground malls and not buying anything. UGH. Sunday was a blast though. We went to something called Golden Beach. We got to play in the ocean, and by we I mean Sarah and I because no one else was ballsy enough to go in. It was great. And then we all rented bikes and rode around. It was so much fun! The bikes were weird. We got side-by-side ones except Sarah who was the only one petite enough to ride the regular bikes. There were a lot of brides taking pictures in their dresses on the beach. We also got some really ridiculously hilarious pictures of us too. I have to steal some of them from Marisa and Coby (which I'll be doing today-ish) but they'll be posted. After the beach, we went to this cool place where the rocks formed an arch over the sea. We went on top of that and then down to the little market nearby. We saw this spider that was as big as a silver dollar there. You should've heard Sarah scream. It was epic.

Well, I'm gonna fiddle around with my compy and then get ready for the rest of today. Latas!

Another Brief Update: Curfew? What curfew?

godohell — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 03:00:00 GMT

So it's 1:00 a.m. here in China. I have to post this just because it's a little surreal.

We were all drinking and playing cards until about midnight (all being me, Coby, Marisa, and Tyler). Coby decided to be a pussy and went to bed, but Tyler, Marisa, and I all decided to go to the beach since at night the waves are higher. Now, for those of you who don't know, which is most of you, we have a 10:00 pm curfew. It didn't take much convincing from Tyler for us to agree to sneaking out, seeing as he was here last year and 'did it all the damn time.'

The ocean is beautiful. It's about a two minute walk from our hotel and it was lovely. There were so many huge waves crashing up against the platform we were on and the mist was nice and cool. There were a lot more stars than I thought there would be, the moon was shining bright, and it was cool, but not 'I'm freezing my nuts off' cold. It was so peaceful. We stood there for about 20 minutes. Also, it was turning to high tide so we got to watch the waves get bigger and bigger.

So we walk home and Tyler volunteers to climb back in the window we got out of and let us in a different, closer to the ground window. The window we had gotten out of had about a five foot drop. So we go around to the front, waiting to be let in. Alas, this is when Marisa and I notice that Mr. Wang is in his office not two doors down from where Tyler's sneaking in. Mr. Wang is in charge of the program. But we figured, "Hey. Tyler's a pro. He said so and he did this all last year. He'll be fine." LIES.

Mr. Wang caught Tyler because Tyler almost fell back out of the window. And then Tyler told him what happened and they came and let us in the front door. Best part was, Mr. Wang just laughed at us and told us to go to sleep. So here I am, going to sleep... sorta...

Good night.

Just A Very Brief Update

godohell — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:08:00 GMT

Hey guys. Just posting to let you know I'm alive, I'm thinking about you all, and I'm doing well. This is the first week we're teaching so it's hectic. I'll give you all the full run-down later. This weekend we're going back to Dalian. I'm hoping to bring my new friend Victoria. We'll see how that goes.

More later.

<3!

I'm A Retard

godohell — Tue, 8 Sep 2009 08:52:00 GMT

UGH. I sometimes feel like I'm the biggest idiot in the whole wide world. I know it takes a while to learn a new language, but I feel like I was so much better at German and Arabic. There have been times recently where I just felt like quitting. And then I realized that I was about 5.3 fillion miles from home and that I was surrounded by Chinese people, thus making it fairly impossible to quit. My Chinese is awful. I wish I could just remember shit we learn in class. I'll get there one day... maybe.

Speaking of class, I taught my first class yesterday. It wasn't too awful. I didn't plan enough which was stupid, so I ended up letting them go early. But I gave out homework and one of my students sent me a text message. How nice of them. Oh yeah. I have a Chinese cell phone. This nice girl named Candy helped me out. She was this Chinese girl who started talking to us randomly on the street. But my student who texted me's name is Devil. He's embarrassed that he texted me so he made me promise not to tell his class. I'm willingly obliging him simply because I was pleased as punch that he would actually text me. I can also understand him feeling a little uncomfortable about texting me as I'm an American teacher and his classmates are maybe 'too cool' to talk to me. Whatever. I'm still happy.

I also made a really awesome new friend yesterday. Her name is Victoria. She's really super nice and we talked for a while. I also got to talk to a guy named Endless. He was super cool. They both spoke really good English, but Victoria needs a bit of grammar help. Luckily, she grabbed the one writing tutor in our group of five so I told her that if she helped me with Chinese, I would help her with writing and grammar. Also, Mr. Wang told me last night that he told this girl, Angel, to come see me about talking in English and practicing Chinese. He told the rest of the gang that it was an opportunity for everyone, but then he looked at me and said, "I told her to come on Thursday because I know you don't have anything." I can't tell if my Chinese is just super awful or if he thinks I'm good with English.

Whatever. Breakfast time!

Damn

godohell — Sun, 6 Sep 2009 10:11:00 GMT

I'm not feeling to well today. I think I might be coming down with something... Just kidding. Those at work should get a good chuckle out of that. It's actually not a hangover this time though, guys. It's allergies. They've been bothering me off and on the whole time, but today I woke up wishing my sinuses would just get it over with and explode. So right now, I'm listening to Jason Mraz's version of "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" while eating a fresh peach and hoping this goes away soon so I can work on homework and preparing for the classes which, oh by the way, start tomorrow. It's a little terrifying. The fresh peach, for your information, I picked myself when we went on a field trip to a traditional Chinese farm. I took pictures, but there wasn't much to see. It was just trees as far as the eye could see. It also smelled like poo. I think that was Wednesday. It might've been Thursday. I can't remember.

All I know is that the same day we went to the farm, we also went to the seaside by a fisherman's village. Some of those pictures were cool. I haven't uploaded them yet though, so don't get too excited.

Yesterday, we went into Dalian. I didn't take any pictures there because we weren't doing our tour. It was mostly just a "exchange money, get food, buy a few random things, and leave" trip. Highly uneventful. Except that we got to eat something called Hot Pot, which was pretty good. Everyone else seemed to love it, but I was only mildly impressed. Well, as far as edibility goes. The presentation was spectacular. Took pics of that too. Will upload when I feel like it. We did make our first new Chinese friend at the bank when we were exchanging our money. His name was Ho something. I don't remember. Technically, Tyler and Sarah made friends with him. I just walked up and got in on the action. He gave us his phone number for when we get our own cell phones.

More later.