September 16, 2006
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China Blog: Day 23
09:51 Beijing Time
Phrase Of The Day: Zaaaaaaaaaoshang hao! (Gooooooooooooood mornin’!)
You know how sometimes you wake up, and just know today’s going to be a
good day? Today’s one of those days. Either that or my brain’s still
shut off from last night’s festivities and hasn’t fully registered that
I’m actually awake and blogging in my dressing gown.Yesterday was a GREAT day, too, except for one minor mishap. Me,
Tom, and Mark went to Guilin Lu (again) so Mark could show Tom around,
we could visit Beard Papa, Tom and I could load up on bootleg
English DVDs, and so that I could pick up and wrap Fiona’s birthday present that I’d reserved the day before. I also
discovered that it is practically IMPOSSIBLE to get a gift wrapped in
China without people assuming it’s for your significant other and thus
attempting to wrap it in the most obscenely garish “OMFG I LUVZ
JOO!!!!” kind of wrapping paper imaginable. However, I did eventually
manage to find something that wouldn’t implicate me as some kind of
rabid, love-crazed fanboy.Remind me to tell you about Chinese dating culture sometime. To an outsider, it’s absolutely hilarious!
We checked out the Foreign Language Bookstore as well, where I
found, of all things, a copy of Dragons Of Autumn Twilight by Margaret
Weis and Tracy Hickman… I’ve been looking for this damn book for
YEARS and now I find it in China, of all places!!!Then it was back to The Pigsty That Is Chez Geek: Export Edition for
a three-hour-long spring clean. Now the place looks *almost*
respectable! My mother would be proud of me if she could see it. Well,
maybe. If she didn’t look too closely. It’s practically impossible to
keep polished stone floors tidy in this dustbowl I call home,
especially when you’re as chronically untidy as I am.It was during this that I had my first REAL episode of homesickness.
One of my purchases had been the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack
(A legacy of the days of Chez Geek Ver. 2.0- it was one of Robin’s
favourite albums) and Norman Blake’s rendition of “You Are My Sunshine”
switched on to the playlist. Now, I have a very deep personal history
with this song, as it was what Mum would sing to me every night when I
was a little kid. I love it, I really, truly do, and it will forever
remind me of her. Nowadays, whenever I’m away from home and hear it, I
get a lump in my throat, but THIS time, I just sat in stunned silence
on my bed, missing everything I left behind, and that was now 5,000+
miles away on the other side of the planet. It was my first real
melancholy moment since I’ve been here.Thankfully, it soon passed, and after the Herculean chore of making
this damn place look vaguely respectable I went out for hot pot (For
the second time that day) with Josh and some of his students, and it
was one of the best meals I’ve had. It really was great fun.The biggest task of the evening lay ahead of me: Getting changed and
guiding a taxi driver across town to a bar I’d never been to, using
only my broken Chinese. Now, this was never going to happen, so 26 yuan
and one conversation with Josh’s students over the phone later, I made
it to the bar where everyone was meeting.Rather than give a blow-by-blow account of the evening, I’ll just
say that I had an amazing time. I met a whole bunch of awesome new
folk, including a fellow D&Dork, sang karaoke, and gave Fiona the
honour of being the first Xangan to ever see my White Boy Dancing
prowess. With the possible exception of Nicole.So, thanks for inviting me, Fi! And Happy Birthday for today!
Anyways, despite stumbling in at 4:30 this morning and bugging mum
and dad with a phone call, I was up bright and breezy this morning (As
in, before 10am. Anyone who knew me as a student knows this is
unTHINKABLE on a Sunday) and now I need to kill this entry and go and
get ready for a trek to Culture Square, followed by our weekly football
match.Zai Jian, folks!
Comments (4)
blimey, i should have been doing other things and i read all about your first few weeks in china instead. it sounds like you’re having oodles of fun. i’m quite jealous actually. you remind me of all the things i should have done when i was young. not that i’m old now. but it would be nice to be younger. i’m glad that you can still use xanga, although it seems odd … you can’t indulge in normal western culture, such as the bbc, but you can read the random blabberings of thousands of ignorant teenagers!?
^Hey, katiefinger, we’re not all bad. =P
Homesickness is a bit like grief; you never know exactly when it’s going to hit you. You did the best thing though; acknowledged it and then when it passed did something fun. It sounds like you are having a wonderful time out there and really getting involved in the culture.
Reminder: tell us about Chinese dating culture.