Early April Ramblings

Hello... it's been a few weeks since I posted anything here. I've been on somewhat of a diet, considering I ran out of cash the last week of March and shut down all spending, didn't eat a whole lot, and just worked. However, this time of reflection allowed me a unique perspective on the welcoming nature of the Chinese people.

Several friends I have met not only showed great concern over the fact that I had no money, but also offered to take me out to dinner. Very kind. Little did I know custom has it that dinner guests are treated like royalty. It is mandatory that the host of a meal ensures that all guests are provided with more than enough food. Several times when friends took me out to dinner, I was asked if I liked a certain dish and surprised to find it delivered to my place setting within minutes. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that saying you like something automatically means that you're going to be served it.

It took me several tries to develop a polite system of kindly thanking my host but delicately informing him that I was full and that one main course was more than enough. Several meals of mine ended up being two or three plates with plenty of leftovers, which I personally was not happy about. I'm not a big fan of leaving behind extra food, which I know will be promptly thrown away afterwards.

Nevertheless, I'm slowly getting the hang of Chinese food, and I managed to snag a restaurant menu, which I will soon devoutly study. My diet as of now consists of fruit juices, fruit, eggs, rice or pasta, and dumplings. I want to mix it up a little bit there and be able to order vegetable dishes and whatever other scrumptious things I'm missing out on. I know there are several. When I go to restaurants I'm always astounded by the delicious looking dishes that other people are ordering.

Today was payday! I am finally wealthy again. And damn wealthy at that. I make about 5x the average salary here, so I'm pretty well off. I have a few things that are on my list of stuff to buy, and I'll be getting to that shortly. More immediately, I need to talk to my bank (ICBC, the biggest bank in the world) to find out how to ship cash back to the States. I've got a lot of debt to pay off there. I briefly considered defaulting on it, but figured that sustaining a reasonable credit rating in the States might be worthwhile for the time being.

Well, I'm off to teach English Corner now. Aston runs weekly seminar-style classes on Wednesday and Friday nights where we host a class for whoever wants to come, even non-Aston students. When we do marketing at various primary schools in the area we give out free passes to these classes, and Aston students can attend them for free. This week we've done a seminar on eating at a restaurant, where by the end the kids should (theoretically) be able to sit down at a restaurant and say "I would like a...". When it comes time to roleplay, Chinese kids love playing the chef most. I have no idea why.

Cheers!