April 2008 Journal
New Suits and a Trip to Sanya - Sunday April 27, 2008Well, I went 6 weeks without updating. Oops! I don't know how I always lose track of time, but now I have a lot of things to cover. Jumping right in:
I have 9 weeks left in China. I'm flying home on July 2nd - just in time for Independence Day. I'm going to be the most patriotic person celebrating the Fourth this year. Living abroad has taught me how great the U.S. really is. Sure we have our problems - but we can drink the tap water, afford comfortable housing, and vote once in awhile... and I'm feeling pretty patriotic (and homesick?) for the good ol' U.S.
I'm going to miss a lot of things in China. Mostly a few select friends and some really good food. But it's so impossible for a foreigner to feel comfortable in this country. People always stare. People always point. They say "laowai!" and "waiguoren!" and "kan kan kan!" and it gets exhausting. I could never be a celebrity, because this makes me a little bit crazy. I just want to buy groceries without being followed around the store. I just want to buy bacon that's not sold next to dog meat. And I'm really excited to be able to communicate freely with the people around me. I'm ready to move home.
Anyway, I'm trying to not think about moving home too much. First, it makes me anxious and I can't sleep well. Second, it makes me homesick. And third, it wastes the last few weeks I have living in China. I don't want to waste any time here, especially since I'm within my last 9 weeks. (And I say that as I sit in my apartment at my computer - totally wasting time in China.)
Over the Spring Festival holiday, I was supposed to fly to Hainan for a week-long vacation on the beach. When I lost my passport, I had to postpone that trip until April. So from April 7th - 13th, I was sitting on the beach in Sanya. I had a great vacation - I saw the ocean for the third time in my life, swam in the ocean for the second time, and found seashells for the first time. (Crazy, I know! But I'm a Colorado mountains kind of guy - I was absolutely surprised to see seashells on the beach. Don't ask me where I thought they came from, because I don't know.)
On April 7th, I landed in Haikou. I didn't have a hotel for the night, and I landed at 12:05 a.m. I figured I would find a comfortable corner in the airport and sleep for awhile before catching a bus to Sanya. But the airport was MUCH smaller than I anticipated, and the lobby only had plastic-shell uncomfortable chairs. I curled up on some anyway and fell asleep. At 1 a.m., the entire airport closed with ME inside! The lights went off and the doors were locked. I stayed the night locked inside the airport in Haikou. When I woke up at 5 a.m., the airport had opened and I had 10 people circled around me staring. "Why is there a foreigner in the airport? Why is he sleeping? Why does he look so different from us?" A security guard asked me in Chinese, "What are you doing?" I just laughed and said, "Sleeping." Fun times!
I left the airport, took a taxi to the bus station, and caught a bus to Sanya. The drive is about 3 1/2 hours, and I wanted to sleep, but it was too beautiful! I couldn't stop looking out the window. I didn't realize just how polluted Jiangsu was. The sky here is always a hazy gray color. But there - clouds! Beautiful, fluffy clouds. And blue skies, stars at night, a huge moon, gorgeous sunsets... I can't wait to get back to the mountains in the Western U.S.
Look at these beautiful skies! I accidentally ended up with about 20 pictures of just the sky:
My schedule in Sanya everyday was the same: up at 9, swim in the ocean until lunch, eat something easy, back to the beach to read / sleep / swim, and then around 6 p.m. I would go home, have a shower, and find a good place for dinner.
I found a great Italian cafe on the beach owned by a really cool Italian man. He gave me some free wine, I had the best lasagna, and we hung out together. I also read about 300 pages in Anna Karenina. I had some great seafood, some fresh-squeezed pineapple juice, and I swam with a body board way too far out in the ocean. All in all, it was a great week on the beach!
Here's me enjoying a beach-side lunch:
And me admiring the giant palm trees:
And finally, me at the end of the week when I'm a lovely red/tan/freckly color:
The trip home was long and arduous. I took a bus, a taxi, I slept outside on the ground near the airport from 3 a.m. - 5 a.m., I took a flight, a bus, a subway, a bus, a train, and a bus. Finally, I got home after almost 24 hours of traveling. Transportation in China is convenient, but slow. Anyway, I had a great trip and I made it home without losing any passports. (Success!) I even collected a few little seashells.
The only other major event lately was two trips to Shanghai - the first to get measured for three tailor-made suits, and the second to pick them up.
The suits weren't very expensive, and the quality is really nice. I ordered three: a dark brown, a gray, and a black. Every man needs a good, black suit.
Of course, a 25-year-old buying his first real suit... my only possible option was to pose like James Bond and take a nerdy photo. I was thinking to myself, "No, this is too dorky even for the internet," but then I remembered that I hosted my own website about my trip to China. Hard to top that in dorkiness! So with no further ado, Kellen and I in our new suits:
Ok, now I'm cooking lunch and I have to run before my potatoes burn. 9 weeks to go!