We're losers.
Trip Start
Sep 14, 2009
1
91
Trip End
Aug 31, 2011
Chicago, Illinois
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
I've been thinking about this comment for a couple of days. This was made to me by one of my Chinese friends who has been US educated and lived there for many years. His critique of westerners who come to China like this: we're lazy. We're most concerned with partying and getting drunk. We chase women and plan poorly for our jobs. We come here, we party, and we go home. We have little to no direction and come here because it's something to do. Sometimes we're running away from things, such as money or family problems. Not all of us, but a lot of us.
I stored his comment and pushed it aside for later, but upon my return home I was reminded of this when I found a used piece of toilet paper sitting next to the toilet.
Oh, btw, I've not been updating this simple because I really didn't want to digress about my roommate. People in my city do read this and while it appears to be a blog, I treat it like a journal. You folk in the US really enjoy that. I'll give a few short lines that are huge oversimplifications of our situation.
He got drunk and sent me text messages both inviting me out and insulting me physically and religiously. Stupidly, I responded asking him what turned him into an asshole that day. He comes back with something more fierce, that I've been pissing him off and he wasn't going to shrug anything off anymore. He rarely complained about anything before, but instead told me not to worry about what I do that bothers him and just bottled it up. Next day I wake up to a passive aggressive note saying we're no longer on speaking terms because I'm an asshole that hurts his friends. If I choose to speak with him it will have to be through notes. This became hard when he went out and then lost his phone. All these people kept calling me to help fix the situation. Clearly he hasn't told people here that he doesn't want me to bother him ever. Beyond this, I was told that (mind you this is very much alleged) he even did things to rile me up and I responded in a way he wanted me to. He said he would move out because he couldn't stand me at all. But, like most things he said he would do, he did not follow through. He's turned into a ghost to me. I hear doors slam, foot steps in the night, small messes in the kitchen, week old clothes turned moldy in the washing machine. To be honest, there's no food left out for days on the counter and no moldy food that I have to clean up in the fridge. He often leaves before I wake up and returns after I'm in bed. So this is far desirable than before and has been a significant stress reducer.
Not so surprisingly, this has also helped my work life. My lesson plans are becoming more effective for them. The kids, even the horrible ones, are falling into line and are participating. Last week I taught my kids how to do the moon walk and almost like clockwork, the worse the class is overall the better they were for that lesson. I had been including more kinetic things in my class and they do respond well to these things, so this was not really a surprise. Now that you're asking yourself this... Yes, I can do the moonwalk. No, I will not post a video of me doing it. It has been a while since I did a dialogue so I tried that again this week. Turned out to be a massive failure was the good kids did the work in class, then the bad kids just did whatever they wanted. Could be a timing thing because midterms are this Thursday and Friday, so some of the kids didn't want to spend the 10 minutes of the 20 that I gave them to do my work.
In the end it was a good day. Why? We have toilet paper again (I bought the last package, so it wasn't my turn) and magically from no where a package of TP appeared. Having toilet paper is totally underrated.
Comments
Keep showing this to folk for a laugh, your becoming quite the ironic comic legend. 'Physically' and 'Religiously'.... is that cause your fat and pretend to be a Celt??