Bland News from a Passive Agressive Observer

I walked up the white stairs, marked up with the black skid marks that shoes and bike tires leave, smelling an aroma that made my mouth water. It had just rained and the sky was clearer than I had seen it since the last time it rained in Beijing… which was my third day in Beijing. The sky was blue, the air felt clean and redolent with fallen rain, mixing with the smells of every apartment cooking food. It all smelled delicious. I walked up the stairs to my house, slowly for once, instead of bounding up the five flights of stairs. My teachers told me that this was the start of spring. The temperatures were going to rise after this rain they said, and the temperatures did. From 20 degrees up to 50’s and 60’s. The weather is getting gradually better.
I had a history paper due recently. It was a travel writing piece of at least seven pages long and had to have at least three sources. So I looked up Yunnan Gaokao on Google… and found my blog. It was a bit of a surprise to say the least. I guess I have to thank you all for making me so popular. Of course I didn’t use myself as a source, but one of my friends did. Bai Laoshi probably won’t like that.
Homesickness sucks, for lack of a better word. Ever since my parents gave Ba, Peter and me a tour of the house via Skype I became a bit nostalgic as I normally do. I used sheer willpower to overcome it. “You stop being homesick right now. Heeeeey… HEY! NO! Alright? Good, go back to work.” I’ve found it a lot easier to ignore mental unrest for some reason. Maybe because I don’t want to end up wasting the precious little time I have left here by being miserable. That’s a good attitude for life in general in my opinion.
Lately a restaurant I frequent has begun to recognize me. I come in and sit down and the cute Sichuan waitress asks me, “The usual?” which is something I only thought happened in movies, plays and the fifties. But it makes me feel a part of a community. Bi Laoshi, (Mr. Bissell,) says that today’s China reminds him of when he was growing up in America. To which I said the 80’s? And my classmates said you have brown on your nose. But if I had to describe what Beijing’s like in a sentence, it’d be, “It’s like living in the TV shows and movies about the fifties and sixties.” Of course I never lived then, but it always felt like an ideal time in my mind because everyone was friendly. I don’t know how else to explain it.
Chris, Warren and I have started a game to test a theory I’ve heard from both my dad and Rand. If you ask ten girls out, at least one of them will say yes. So far the game’s going well though. Also, a side note to that, do not ask for girl’s numbers at McDonalds… it’s kinda tasteless. Long story… Not the time for it, but let’s just say it made the three of us reconsider speaking English openly.
Shen Laoshi has kicked up the pace on our studies. We’ve had 45+ words a night for the past week just from his Chinese class. Li Laoshi has only been giving us 25ish and we’re ever so thankful for her leniency. But I love that we’re moving at this pace, it feels like we’re making the most of the time we have left, plus all the grammar we’re learning has been filling in the empty voids in conversations I’ve had in the past, and I slowly am understanding what people said months ago. I feel a bit like Jason Bourne in that respect.
I just felt like updating you all with a little lighthearted news from around here in a sort of… non-sequitor format.


You’ve got no time to lose. You are young men, you must be living.