Settled in

^Hired by Uncle Sam's English on July 4th.  #'Merica.  The morning of the grand opening ceremony, they 'informed' me that I would be giving a brief speech.. once in English and the second time in Chinese.  I love the way things are done in China.  #WhyDidYouTrustMeToDoThat?

I think I haven't written in a while because I've gotten pretty used to living in China. My barber says, "same as last time?" when he sees me.  The lady I buy my fruits and vegetables from stopped complimenting me on my Chinese.  I go to work, I teach English, I study Chinese, in fact, I have gotten so efficient at handling things back home that I don't even think about time differences now; my meetings are always sometime between 9-11AM EST.  The only thing that hasn't normalized is riding the metro, which comes in varying degrees of excruciating.  It poured here today (and on a side note, I didn’t realize how serious the storm was until people in America started asking me if I was ok, read here) and no matter what time of day you get on the metro, it’s always packed and you're skin will be touching someone else's.  Add the smell of wet dog on top of that, and you've really got a hot mess on your hands.

^Tough work out here at the USCBC.

I do miss Shanghai for several reasons, maybe the first one being that you could always get a cab and the second one being that at least in the afternoons you could get a seat on the metro.  Beyond the superficial, I do miss my roommate Jeff, who just arrived in Minnesota for school, along with the chance to speak Chinese everyday.  It’s kind of ironic that when I left Shanghai, my Chinese was pretty good and I pledged to myself that I'd find an awesome group of new Chinese friends in Beijing. On top of that, I'd have to find Chinese girlfriend who could put up with awkwardly phrased Chinese text messages for a few months.

^The 12 year-old girl memorized a brief speech on the effects of technology on eduction. Wow.

Well, things don’t always work out as planned, but sometimes that’s for the better.  I have been teaching my host family’s daughter English about 5 times a week and if I have the chance, I have dinner with them in the evening.  So her father, who is a pretty high level manager in a bank here in China, is a brilliant guy, with English skills that far exceed my Chinese!  Well fortunately, he’s both smart and patient enough to work through our economically and politically charged conversations in Chinese, so I find myself talking with him for hours after dinner and learning so much about Chinese modern history and current events from a Chinese person’s perspective.  On top of that, I’m seeing first hand the struggles that the millions of young Chinese students face to get into competitive middle schools, just so they can get into a good high school that can prepare them for the Gaokao (the Chinese SAT, but on steroids).  The 12 year-old girl’s parents give her a lot of pressure and it really is out of hope for her to have a promising future.  Although its summer vacation, she tells me in perfect English that everyday from morning until night, her whole day is a series of blocks, starting with math lessons in the morning, two English lessons, piano practice, along with any of her other extracurriculars that she does. Living here in China has given me such a better inside look at what’s really happening in China, at least more so than what most Western media outlets can offer.