a big let down

I have been living my life in a bit of a bubble...

Eating at the same gaifan restaurants, hanging out with the same laowai people, trying to find jobs in the same foreign places.

After the horror that was 2 weeks ago--post still to come--I was excited to get out of the doldrums.

I have been teaching, in some form or another for going on 4 years. Tonight was the first time I had a student ditch--Now for you students out there, block your ears--and it was nice and liberating. I knew I was getting paid, and I had an extra free hour and a half on my hands.

So I went to my favorite, nay, the most convenient restaurant near my apartment. I finished my gaifan, and prepared to leave. On my way out, a group of five laoren came in, and invited me for a drink.

Those who know me, besides my parents, and dare I say it, though I know it will know it will do no good, block your ears, you parental units, you who of all things knowledgeable are known, block your ears. As I was saying, you who know me, who are not related to me by blood, know that I am not one to turn down a drink, a strange smelling pot of soup, an elephant ball full of strange meat, and by ball, I mean sack. (With this distinction, I have to ask...what is an elephant ball, if not an elephant sack? A small plastic sphere, where tiny elephants are contained? Whereby these tiny elephants are able to roll themselves down to a basement darkness unknown by almost all normal-sized pachyderms? I realize now that I may have digressed.)

I sat to drink. After my time in Ningxia, I had been prepared. I could drink beer before Ningxia, but Baijiu was a learned skill from that time in my life. Say it with me, as would Shakespeare, learn ed. Not learned, by any means...but learn id.

We sat, we drank. One of my hosts pointed out that our boss host was a policeman. By the revealer's face, I can only assume I was supposed to be shocked and disgusted by this...but nay, my father is a judge, and you need to muster something much higher than a simple policeman to shock this one.

So I drank with the policeman, acknowledging that we had lived in the same building for 6 months without me knowing. After this fact came to light, I spent a huge amount of time, relative to drinking, remembering all their faces.

I kept trying to secure their phone numbers. To know a policeman, who works in my neighborhood, is a huge windfall. (Oh, you're robbing a liquor store? Oh, but you know Policeman Wang? No problem...we'll see you at the gaifan place.) But they protested. If you have a problem, all you have to do is knock, they said. As a fairly Buddhist fellow, I could not help but to agree.

So we sat and drank, and drank and sat, and only since sitting is more comfortable, we sat as much as we drank, and it all turned out about equal.

Then we said "Zouba!" and turned to leave, as that is what zouba means.

We reached the intersection in the road where we would all turn the same way. It was at that point I realized that racism cuts both ways. Negative and positive. They clearly thought that I was a laowai from their building, while in fact I was a laowai from another building. So we walked apart, most likely never to see another again, since there is roughly a million people in my block.


God, let that policeman remember me.



-------------
Glossary

gaifan (n)--literally left-over rice, refers to a single serving of Chinese food served over a bed of rice.
laowai (n)--literally old foreigner, somewhat derogatory term for...you guessed it...foreigner. 'Cause we look so old.
laoren (n)--same lao...old people.
baijiu (n)--literally white liquor, most likely the worst alcohol on the planet. Made from sorghum, once one has had a hangover from this nasty stuff, they are able to smell a bottle being opened from 100 yards.
zouba (interjection)--let's go!

guess who's back

I had a psych professor in college who dubbed me "Slim Shady" the first day into freshman orientation. Thank god it never stuck. To be honest, I feel I don't feel either of those words fit me. Well, definitely not slim...

But I am back, after an extended hiatus. My lack of posts were due to a few things over the past few months...stress at work, stress about quitting my job, stress about finding a new job, stress about visas. Even though my troubles are not yet over (God willing, they will be resolved by the end of the day), I decided to get back on my horse and write.

So let the muses descend, and I will have a new, more interesting post by the end of the day.