April 9-20, 2010

April 9-20
Odds and Ends

I'm amazed at how clean Chinese people can be and yet how dirty. When I was cooking with Rachel, she cleaned every little leaf and every surface that we would be working on, some people take great care in not touching anything with their hands to keep them clean, food comes wrapped in like three layers of sealed packaging. All of this and the next instant you look up as you pass some apartment buildings you see some garbage flying down to the ground, a person throwing their trash in the street, or parents rushing their kids to the side of a building for a bathroom break. I see street cleaners sweeping up after everyone and removing garbage from outside the apartment buildings but it still amazes me that they can be so worried about the cleanliness of things and yet maintain the habits they've formed.

I certainly am enjoying myself; Meeting lots of new people, pampering myself as much as I can, I have a fairly slack job, and I'm even finding some clothes that fit me (I even found a long sleeve shirt that was a medium that fit me) I am trying to take full advantage of everything as much as I can. The hair washes and massages are my favorite. Anything that involves customer care is taken very seriously here. I’m sure it’s because if they treat their customers badly in any way then the customers just run off to another little shop half a block down. I’m going to miss being waited on hand and foot when I go home. The weather is the same old same old; rainy and cloudy but June I think the weather starts to become sunnier with less rains, however that’s also when the typhoons hit too. “typhoons” really. Wenzhou is too far from the cost to feel the full effects but we’ll get torrential downpours and quite a bit of wind. I’m actually excited to see my first one. I have learned a lesson about the weather: no matter how cold it looks outside, no matter how rainy and grey and windy the weather seems; don't wear a sweater. I thought it was going to be cold one day because looking out the window made me shiver but then when I stepped out and headed to class I soon learned I would be sweating buckets for the rest of the day. It was warm and humid and definitely no need for a sweater. ^_^ Ha ha, I forgot about the day lengths…here the days and nights are pretty consistent. It’s 5:30pm while I’m writing this and it’s just dusk. I woke up at 6:30am the other day and it was light out; not middle of the day light but not sunrise either. The humidity has done me one favor though; I haven't had any nose bleeds since coming to China.

I saw a frog hopping in front of me one day and couldn't help but wonder who's dinner was running away.

I walked into my school the other day and they were blaring Christmas music. We're now four months past Christmas and I'm still listening to deck the halls and winter wonderland.

When you're walking down the street and just people watching you will see some people relaxing waiting for the bus or a friend to show up or customers to come to the shop. The most common relaxing position I see is this awkward squat. It almost looks like their squatting for a pee; their feet are about shoulder width apart, butts touching their legs, their feet stay flat on the ground, and their arms sit comfortably between their legs. I have tried to sit in this "relaxing" position and it is anything but. I end up wobbling all over because I have no balance and my ass can't even touch my legs if my feet have to stay flat on the ground. I have no idea how they do this and find myself staring at them as I walk by trying to study how they stay so still. Ha ha, which reminds me of something else. If I meet someone on the street and they try to talk to me and they realize I don't understand what they're saying they get this confused look on their face, they pause for a minute, realize they have a genius plan, pull out a pen and a pad of paper and start writing what they were trying to say. Ha ha ha. I always laugh because what else can you do but look down at some scribbly Chinese writing and say "if I can't understand what you're saying, do you think I am going to understand what your're writing?".

The other common thing I see are wedding dress shops. They're like Starbucks; there's one on every corner. Apparently weddings a huge to do here. I have learned that boys will wear their wedding bands on their left ring finger, girls will wear their ring on the right ring finger to show they are engaged and then move it to the right middle finger when they get married. Also, the boy's family will buy the girl a present before they get married like a car or a house. :-O why do we not have this rule. Ha ha ha. The fireworks I keep hearing all year round are for weddings and funerals. They shoot them off when the couple shows up to the hotel they are celebrating at. I'm not sure why they shoot them off for funerals though, one suggestion was to protect the spirit on their journey to the next world.

Ok. I think that is all for this time. I think once May hits I'm going to be doing one post a month. I'll do one at the end of April and then after that it will be one post at the end of the month to sum everything up; Especially now that all the new stuff has become daily occurrences.

Until next time….