Surreality

We moved into our shithole of an apartment Friday morning. A professor of mine once said that he distiguishes between the so-called "First World" and the so-called "Third World" based on if a flush toilet is present. In our apartment, after you shit, you must pour water down the drain because there is no flusher, its literally a shithole. After we left our things in the apartment we traveled to a school to teach a class, no big deal.

Or so I thought.

I staggered out of the van, unkempt simply to spite the General for dragging me on this trip, I was sick, and still wearing the shirt that I sleep in, a hat over my eyes when I raised my head.

Two rows of students, hundreds long, television cameras, and every school official greeted Sherkhan and I. We walked by the welcoming students with our mouths hanging open. All this was for us? Then we entered a small room packed with students. We sat at a round-table as two students MCed. The welcomed us with the cameras rolling. Two more students sang for us. Then we were asked to speak. We did, and answered many questions. When we sat back down, the school officials asked us some more questions. I was asked whether Bush's "No Child Left Behind" was simply political propaganda, and I said that I felt it was. After that, we took tons of photos. Pretty girls grabbed me to have their picture taken with me. Guys grabbed my ass for some reason. We thought we shit like money.

Next we had a fansy Chinese lunch. After lunch we were checked into a hotel for 30 minutes. That's classy! You know you've hit the big time when that happens! They actually wanted us to "have a wash" (take a bath in a bath house) and made constant remarks about prostitutes and the beauty of Chinese girls. Walking up to the hotel room, we were quite nervous that there be hookers awaiting our arrival. We shitted-showered-and-rested.

Our visits to each and every class was another ego-booster. They whisped Sherkhan from my side and I would not see him for several hours. I visited each class, amounting to about half the school, for ten minutes each, giving the same introduction and answering the same questions again and again. Each person in each class wanted to get a picture taken with me. By the end I had a headache from all of the flashes. One photographer with a digital camera needed to change the batteries twice.

Then we were taken to another city and had a fansy Chinese dinner. After dinner, the General offered to take us to "get our feet washed, heh heh heh." General Dipshit is very creepy. Then a school official who talks like he's James Earl Jones (the black actor, not the guy who shot Dr. Martin Luther King), talked about how beautiful Chinese girls are, with a smirk on his face. Great, another possible hooker situation! Luckily, they simply washed our feet and massaged our feet and legs.

The first school only has 2,000 students, the second school has 13,000 students. Sherkhan thought that we'd be celebrities again on Saturday. I figured our day in the sun was over.