I have made my money, and now I am preparing to leave!
On Thursday, after I get the results of my regular STD tests back, I will take off hitch hiking to southern China! The plan is to spend the next two months spending all of my money, and returning back to the USA happy, relaxed, and poor. This is contingent upon the acceptance of my financial aide for massage school. I hope that comes in soon, because if it doesn’t then I am not going to ‘waste’ my money by coming back to the USA. Although I really want to see family if I can’t go to school, or do some other interesting project in the states I will either stay here in China, or some other Asian country where pay is high and food is cheap.
Going to school will help bring me back traveling in more style. I hope that my next trip abroad will be doing massage on a cruise ship. Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching English, but I feel I should be doing what I am good at… and I am only a mediocre English teacher.
In preparation to leave I have been visiting friends. I went to go visit HuNan (Tiger Man) and buy a tea pot from him. I ended up buying a 100USD teapot. It was difficult to spend that much money on a pot when I could spend 10USD for one that looks so similar… But, I will use the pot for the rest of my life, and I wanted to buy something expensive from him. HuNan’s wife just had a baby, and his shop was closed down without warning. 600RMB is a lot of money in China, and he will make much better use of it then I will.
When HuNan asked me out to lunch I thought he wanted to have a going away lunch for me, but when I showed up there where almost 30 people there! About half of them were Korean, three from Europe, Me, and the rest were Chinese.
As I was introduced to everyone I was so impressed with the improvement in my Chinese level over the past few months, and very thankful that everyone had very easy accents. We joked and talked for hours as we ate AMAZING Chinese food and drank both very nice tea and alcohol. We drank JingJiu, it’s a kind of BaiJiu made in the south of China. BaiJiu or “white alcohol” is a very strong liquor with an all too often very strong and very offensive taste. This stuff was actually fairly tasty, and I drank an awful lot of it. No Problem, I already told my work that I would be coming into my class drunk. After class I invited my student out to dinner with my Chinese friends. One of my work mates saw me and asked about my drunken class in front of my student! He said that he could smell it on me but could not tell that I was drunk! It was amazing because, as I don’t drink often, when I drink I get very drunk!
The only person who obviously got drunker then I did was HuNan. In China, at times like that, weddings, babies, whatever, It is a cultural responsibility to drink heavily, and HuNan was holding up his end of the deal.
After Lunch we went to Karaoke. I would guess that all of you know how poorly I sing? Well, I have steadfastly avoided Karaoke since coming to China, but I couldn’t turn this one down. It was horrific. The German guy could sing pretty well in Chinese. As could HuNan and his sister, both of whom could sing Korean as well. That made up about half of the party. The other half sang almost as poorly as I did.
Thankfully everyone got tired after only a couple hours and it was time to go home. HuNan’s sister said good by (and HuNan and I made fun of her) for about another hour as we stood outside the mall… Finally I went back to my… Oh, Shit. I never explained how I am Couchsurfing in my own apartment did I? Well to make a long story short: I am.
After just a few minutes of resting at my “friend’s house”, I realized that I was late for work! My friends tried to urge me not to go, but it was almost my last class with one of my favorite students!
When I finally take off I will take a bus to the next city south of Beijing to get out of the insanity and then I will try to hitch hike to Tai Yuan City to visit the very same student I showed up drunk for. I always feel a bit of trepidation prior to hitching… It’s the lazy part of me that doesn’t like to be uncomfortable. In China, that feeling is greatly intensified. I know that China will be very safe, but likely very uncomfortable: both physically and mentally.
I look forward to facing the unknown and being present in the way that you only can when you are experiencing something new for the first time…
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