Deep thoughts, cheap shots and bon mots - XVIII

So I’ve now been in China for one week and of course it feels like longer. Some random thoughts and observations:

There are no fat people here. I kind of expected that, but it’s still “interesting” to see – esp. after spending the past 18 months in one of the fattest states in the U.S. It’s especially nice to not have to see the EXTREMELY obese people. Having been “fortunate” enough to live in one of the “skinniest” cities in the U.S. for over a dozen years (San Francisco), it literally would turn my stomach to see some of the just obscenely, grotesquely fat people waddling around Oklahoma. And don’t give me that crap about it being genetic. What? It’s a deep south gene? (rolling eyes)

Even though I haven’t started teaching yet, we’ve all noticed that the children here are all MUCH better behaved than U.S. children. And so cute! I seriously have not seen a single ugly Chinese child. Which is odd, coz I’m certainly not implying that all the adults are attractive! ;) But you never hear/see kids throwing tantrums here, screeching/crying/or demanding something. It’s nice!

Can’t say the same for the drivers. I’ve bitched almost everywhere I’ve lived about drivers, with each city I’ve lived in having different “quirks” (e.g., Oklahoma drivers are among THE most selfish and clueless ones I’ve encountered, while in Vermont they’re maddeningly passive aggressive), but Chinese drivers put them all to shame. They don’t care SQUAT about lanes, red lights, being polite, etc. Right on red with no stop. Almost plowing anyone down who dares to use the crosswalk WITH the light. What’s even more amazing is that I have yet to see a single accident. I don’t know how they do it, unless it’s some kind of Chinese auto-magic!

While I’m getting used to the smells, it’s often still pretty gross. Sometimes it’s the food (just not used to it), more often it’s the crappy sewer system (so to speak) during hot days. NOT pretty. But on the flip side, Shanghai is, on the whole, an astonishingly clean city for one that houses over 20 million people. Just tonight, I saw an elderly woman furiously scrubbing a miniscule piece of gum out of a crack in one of the 50 million bricks in the underground subway tunnel. BTW, almost every underground subway stop/tunnel system is a full-fledged mall. And the subway system is astonishingly good/consistent. Way better than anything I’ve experience in any city in the states.

 While we’ve had some awesome meals and not so awesome meals, it’s been “interesting” to be “re-introduced” to MSG. Five Spice is pretty ubiquitous, too, which can be great, but also weird when you taste it in random stuff you wouldn’t expect to find it in. It reminds me of encountering dill entirely too often in Kazakhstan!

Training has been interesting and tiring. Probably partly coz of the “intensity” of living in such a foreign culture, and partly coz I have been unemployed/not working for nearly a year a half. Today (Thursday), we did our first practice lessons using Disney methods and it was fun/interesting. I can already tell I’ll be exhausted from teaching/being “on” – at least for a while. I had the same experience when I first started teaching in Peace Corps.

The other trainees and I seem to get a little punch drunk from the experiences/training. Something seems to “come over us” when we get on the Subway – esp. me and these two women, Lauren (from Florida) and Mindy (from Texas). We start talking about THE most random stuff and invariably end up laughing our asses off – which doesn’t faze the 10,000 unsmiling locals on the subway. The other night, we were bemoaning the “Turkish toilets” so prevalent here (basically a porcelain hole you squat over) and saying if we somehow got stuck with one in our apartment (rare, fortunately), we’d put a lawn chair over it and cut a hole in the middle. :) Then, we figured we’d need to put some sort of “wall” around the bottom of the chair to prevent splash, and it just devolved from there into all kinds of other features we’d have in the bathroom such as a disco ball, an iPod dock, elaborately decorated walls, etc. We dubbed it the “ iShit.” Needless to say, you had to be there, but we were laughing so hard we no doubt did no good for the reputation of Americans as loud and crazy. :)