Random Madness of a Bygone Week

I haven't had a lot of time to be able to dedicate to the blog recently with work getting busier as the semester rolls on, but that doesn't mean that weird stuff hasn't been happening to me on a fairly regular basis. Some of it funny, some of it, at the very least, laughable. This won't be the most coherent of entries, but at least there are a few things that are worth sharing.


To start, I have reached one of those points in the year where I become so tired of hearing people yell at me that I start to become unreasonably impatient with it. There are so many cocky hot boys that love to increase their self-worth/testosterone flow by yelling at a young western male. There are also many more people that are genuine in their wish to get to know you. The two of them put together is a brutal mixture, because you are constantly asked to be in extrovert mode, even in the face of supreme ignorance, and I am not always the best example of patience and understanding. Last week by Friday I was at the end of my rope, and in the period of one hour of walking from the English department to my apartment, and then riding my bike off campus I got about 20 hello's (no exaggeration, but pretty standard), mostly from people I have never seen before in my life(this is dangerous, because if you respond too positively they will start talking with you all the way until you arrive at your house.), one girl jumping in front of me and saying in English, "Good morning, are you a foreigner?"


I responded with a "What do you think?" That I was proud I managed to make sound more cheery than sarcastic, she shot back,


"Great!" and then ran away.

I was tired and decided to go to town to get a bite to eat. I was listening to my MP3 player as I rode my bike off campus. Wearing the MP3 player is tough bc it helps me to ignore people talking about me, but it also attracts more comments, as owning an MP3 player is a sure fire sign that you are "very cool." I ran into a couple of hot boys as I was riding out and they were having a good time joking around( always a bad sign, if hot boys are sitting around joking, they are primed to scream at a foreigner as they go by, instantly getting another cheap laugh out of everybody) and two of them saw me, one screamed out "whow whow" in an imitation of our dorky American accent, and another boy went falsetto and said very loudly,


"oh, a-so-ah cool-ah!"

to which I quickly responded in one of my more witty moments, "FUCK YOU!"

The thing about f- you is that thanks to Hollywood everyone and their mom's around the world know the meaning, and so this drove the hot boys crazy as they screamed back in delirious anger,

"Ah-fuck-eh you to-ah!" (I have to include the ridiculous accent they used because it was comical, and also adds to the point of how ignorant they were/are)

The problem is as I rode away I was left to contemplate how stupid my reaction was, since these kids obviously now hate foreigners more than they did to begin with. Thanks to my quick temper, they may think in general that foreigners are arrogant or don't understand the Chinese in all of their depth and screaming. Such are the generalizations that people can jump to when they never see people of a different race for their entire life. Things you got to be careful when trying to build bridges between cultures, it is a hell of a lot easier to burn them than build them, the most dangerous thing is that sometimes it is even strangely more pleasing...


Besides temper tantrums and catcalls, I also saw some funny things this week, the first T-shirt one of my students was wearing

I really wish that is said "...bitch!" at the end of it. This chick knows what she wants! Another fun photo I took at the English department in between periods:

Now that is how you wash a window! They like to keep things interesting here at Zaozhuang U. by adding the excitement of possibly plummeting to your death to the simple task of window washing. This guy/gal has obviously climbed Mt. Tai.


I also this week got around to reading through the questionnaires that I give students in the beginning of the year, in which I ask them to tell me what they would most like to learn about this year during class. Most of the students write down relevant things about how they would like to learn more about American food culture, American sports, American University life, good ways of studying Oral (Practice, practice, practice,...Can't get enough of the "Oral" joke!!) etc... but there are always some gems among the questions that I'm sure any teacher can appreciate. My personal favorite this time around was one written by Li Guo Dong( I told them I didn't want their names) who got straight to the point:


-Commercial Law


-Chinese Literature


-Cultural critics


-Internet Information


I will have to see how I can work Commercial law and Chinese literature into my English classes. Maybe right in between the lessons where I teach them the proper use of the past tense, and how to use the word "the."


Some girls hit me with some hard hitting Q's though:


"Why is your hair so little?"

I especially like this question, because it is so closely associated to a question which I have often fielded in years passed from students, which is, "Why are you so hairy?" Apparently I can't win, but at least I know these girls have some serious goals for the academic year. People thought Katie Couric was tough.

Lastly, there have been some problems this week too, one is I recently had the pleasure of living with a full body rash...
This was the only picture that came out somewhat clearly, thank goodness that I strategically placed my hand in front of my unmentionables in order to keep this photo in the PG-13 rating. But needless to say, full body rashes SUCK! I have no idea how I got it, which is also nice, since I have no way of avoiding it in the future.

Next, I was hanging out at a friends house and they were telling me I should eat some sort of medicine that they were planning on eating. They were pretty serious about it, so I went online and checked out what it was that they were going to take. I can't remember the name of the drug but it turns out that it was a drug used to for killing parasitic worms such as tapeworms, ring worms, hookworms, pin worms... you get the idea. I was a little surprised by this and mentioned the surprise to my friends who responded,

"what, you've never been wormed before?"

I had to admit I was inexperienced, the only experience I have with worming is feeding my cat worm medication laced with tuna fish to get to her eat it. Little bugger just can't avoid the worms! But they insisted that they do it on a yearly basis, which I was somewhat intrigued to learn, because the water is infested with parasites here due to the waste produced by such an excess of people in such a small area. Everyone boils all the water before drinking, I buy all spring water, but still they take the medication because the parasites are still fairly prevalent. I did end up taking the medication out of precaution since I have been here for so long, though mine was not covered in delicious tuna fish. I was, however, treated to a story by my friends mother of how much better the new medication is than the old medication because at least now with the new medication you don't see all of the worms in your fecal matter the next morning. The old medication used to just kill the worm and let you pass it the next day, for all to see. She even showed me with her fingers the size of the worms that would be seen the next day in the toilet. Lovely.

So lets take a tally... let's see, in the past two weeks I have had a serious stomach virus, full body rash, and been de-wormed. Banner two weeks for JL, but I am becoming stronger with the passing of time, and hopefully, a bit luckier. Maybe next week I will discover some priceless jade pottery in the garbage around my apartment building or, even better, get a coupon for a personal pan pizza at the Pizza Hut in Xu Zhou(has anybody ever gotten worms at Pizza Hut?). I'm keeping my fingers crossed