March 8, 2010

Life here is so much different than what I expected.  I feel as though each day is a week and I have such a hard time keeping track of what days I do what- all except for Sunday, that one I can keep straight.  With each day seeming to last forever, I also feel as though I’ve changed in that time… and knowing that I’ve changed as much as I have within only 2-3 weeks makes me wonder how much I really will have changed by the time I actually go back home.  Before, I was excited to come but still excited to go back; now, I don’t really want to go back- I really feel like I could just stay here for a really long time.  Unfortunately, that conflicts with the whole EFY thing, but I’ll see what I can do about that.  Honestly though, I feel as though I’ll be here for quite awhile (but really, it’s not that long) and I’ve realized that I’ve kinda been wasting some of the time I have here… I really don’t have that much time and I need to make the most out of what I do have.  Hopefully I can figure out someone I can learn some Chinese from- whether in exchange for English lessons or something else; I guess I’ll just have to wait to see what happens.  Man, I love living here!  This really is an amazing life- sure it’s not as clean or necessarily as easy to find things to do here but at the same time everything just seems like there’s more to it.  Everyone here is so friendly and it’s awesome to walk up to my favorite lady for lunch and see her smile as we come and recognize us.  It was funny today; she actually put in a little more spice than usual as if she’s slowly been getting us accustomed to the spice.  But her food is amazing, especially her fried rice!  When I walk down the street there will be so many people that just call out “hello” when they don’t think you’ll know it’s them because they’re scared about it… but at the same time they love seeing us.  The other day we were on the street deciding what we wanted to do and a guy came up and started asking some questions, then another joined him, and people kept just joining to see what we would say (Sam knows enough to understand what they say and to respond).  Finally we just had to say we were going back home so that we wouldn’t get stuck there for much longer.  I don’t know, I guess there’s just something about the simplicity of life here that I absolutely love.  There’s no need for a lot of extra things; I don’t know if I’ll even know what to do with all the clothes I left behind, and as far as some of the other stuff goes… man, it’ll be weird.  I used to be bad at making decisions but now when I go back there’ll be so many choices I won’t even know where to begin!  For instance, whether to have French, Italian, American, Mexican, Mongolian, or Chinese food- well, first of all I’d probably pick Chinese but then be sad that it’s nothing like what I’m used to- I’ll probably take ages to decide.  It’s rather interesting to see the way that the people in my group are adjusting- albeit, I don’t see them all the time like I do Nikki and Sam, but I do see some of them just about every week.  Sometimes I wonder how bad my “culture shock” was since I came here before because I can see that there are so many who’ve been going through it but they don’t necessarily recognize it for what it is.  Anyway, I guess I feel like I’ve really just adjusted to life here in China pretty much completely… though I do still keep up my hygiene unlike most people here.  For instance, when crossing the street the cars don’t stop at all- they just keep going- so you learn to kind of just walk across without actually waiting for the “perfect moment” instead you just stop in the middle of the street until the car passes.  Another thing is that they honk all the time, and at first I would jump at that sound all the time; luckily I don’t actually jump anymore.  Oh, and they always have fireworks- I can hear them in the background almost every day and back in America I would love to run outside to see if I could find them and watch them.  Here, I figure that if I miss it today there’ll be some tomorrow; besides, we’re planning on setting off some huge fireworks ourselves once it warms up a bit.  Sorry if this has been kind of all over the place- I just kinda typed what came to mind.  Anyway, I’ll write another update thing later this week about what it is that I’ve been doing… Well, until next time!  我 愛 你 們!