The Run Around

If you read Sherkhan's blog you will get some sense of the frustration that both of us are feeling. His blog is at Beijingbetty.blogspot.com.

Last night was cool. We found some ex-pats and hung out with them briefly. They were all older than us, but at least they spoke English. That sounds horrible, but the English teachers here can hardly speak English, and I'm tired of talking to Khan ova-here. Two weeks straight and we have nothing to say to each other besides expressing our anger at the drunken clowns who are in charge of finding us a teaching job and an apartment.

We call the head guy, Robert, many different names. My favorite is G-G-G-G-G-Unit, created by Sherkhan. Bobby' not a Gangsta, he just has a ridiculous stutter. Most Chinese stutter a bit in English, but this guy does it in Chinese too. I only make fun of stutters if they're jerks. We also call him stutter-step, for obvious reasons. Also, if Mr. Magoo and Porky Pig had a baby, you'd get this guy. He drives bad for any country. Slow as shit to be exact.

The next guy is General Dipshit. A real asshole. He's the "English teacher." Upstairs is not downstairs jerk-wad. He's loud, drunk, smokes a ton, and is just an asshole.

Luckily, we didn't see Dieter today. He's a techno-drug addict. He smokes a ahlf-pack of cigarettes at every meal and drinks a ton of vodka as well.

There are plenty of others, but who has time to describe their unique idiocies.

Last night, we did see a dude that was even shorter than ma. He was like 2 feet tall. He talked like Mickey Mouse after he just got kneed in the groin. But he was cool, because he knew what was up. He played to the laughing crowd and made some money. Then he stared right in my face and gave me the "lip," trying to act all downtrodden. If I were to give him money for being short, then he should give it right back to me for being stupid.

Internet cafe's themselves have been something. Yesterday, I walked into a cafe looking for Sherkhan. I just stepped in and looked confused. The guy who works there started clapping his hands and yalling at me and then pointing. Sure enough, there was Sherkhan at the end of the cafe. How did he know that I was looking for him and that we were together? That's what they think of foreigners here. They call us Lo-i (or law-i). Basically it means stupid foriegner. I might punch the next guy who calls me that right in the face.

Right now, I got some prick staring at my screen. Yeah you, you're a prick! Hahaha, he has no idea what I'm writing. You're a prick buddy.

Today, we taught a class with many students. The kids are very shy and don't know English well at all. But it was fun.

Afterwards, we ate dinner with people from the school. We learned that the Chinese have a custom of drinking themselves stupid with straight vodka. The headmaster had like 20 shots. Tjis is what we're dealing with.