One of Dem Days

Unfortunately date rape is a far too common occurance in society. Last night I think I was actually rape dated though. I was chillin, watching some tv, when Sherkhan came into my room. He popoped in Bridgett Jones II or some shit, took his shirt off, and crawled into my bed. After 5 minutes of utter shock on my part, I mustered up enough to say, "What the fuck?" Then we watched the movie with this bum eating snacks in my bed shirtless. Somebody help me.


An NBA game was actually on tv today!!!!! And it was Game 7 on the Eastern Conference Finals no less!!!!! Of course, today was the day that we finally started teaching our classes on a consistant basis. Oh, and with my luck, of course our classes were right during the game. So I missed most of it.

Later that night I went to turn on the tv and of course, nothing. The shit didn't turn on. So I tried to fixed it the Jewish way. I threw the remote on the bed, smacked the tv, fiddled with the plug, and then spewed cuss words in Yiddish. Strangley, the tv still didn't work. In fact, the dvd player no longer worked either. So there went any hope of maybe catching a replay of the game.

When Sherkhan came back to the apartment, he was able to fix them both, thankfully.

It was also a day of more firsts. I rode on the back of Abbot's moped, scared out of my mind. When we requested helmets for our bikes, they laughed at us. There was no helmet for the moped either.

I also learned how to ride a bike. I think I learned pretty quickly. In 15 minutes I went from not being able to balance at all (just bailing from the bike as it crashed to the ground) to being able to ride around and perform circles. I had quite an audience watching me make an ass out of myself too. I didn't care for some reason. This place has stripped me of any potential feeling of self-consciousness. You can't feel self-conscious as a foreigner here, or you have no chance of being happy. Every move you make is watched and critiqued. Even my shoes. I've noticed that many young people check out my shoes as they pass me. They're in for quite a disappointment, because my shoes are about a year old and are quite worn out.

I saw another midget today. I liked him much better than the mean one.

One aspect of my Jewishness came out at dinner. I was comfy in my chair when the waiter asked to take the empty chair that we had. I went to lift it over me when he told me "no." He wanted my chair and asked me to move over. That chair was cold and uncomfortable. So I started hollering whenever he passed by. Of course, he had no idea that I was talking to him. He also rinsed out his rag in our trash can. Each table had their own trash can. I yelled at him in my sarcastic bitter way over that too.

Classes were cool. I really enjoy teaching the kids English. They range from 17 years old to 19, I think. Of course, I'm 24 in China, so who the hell knows what that means. I run around the classroom like a kook trying to peak their interest somehow. We talk about basketball, school, anything that they can talk about. It occured to me during class, "am I really the teacher talking in front of 60 kids who are not much younger than myself?" "Yep, it's me," I told myself.

My shyness is gone when I'm prancing around in class. Or out of class for that matter. You can't afford to be shy here either. Many people scream "hello" at us as we walk down the street. This may be their only interaction with foreigners, maybe ever, so we have to be polite and answer back.

Well I have class at 8 am tomorrow. 8pm back home. If anyone's gonna be in the Liangyungong area tomorrow around 7am, please stop by and wake me up for class. Thanks.