The First Great Adventure of my Life.

I have a Chinese stalker. Or more like I have a whole school of Chinese stalkers. On any given day you have a good chance of being approached by a total stranger who, in 2 minutes, will ask you any number of personal questions, always tailed by a request for your phone number and a plan to help them study English. Lately I have taken to lying and saying I don't have a phone, but they are quite persistent and don't have a problem with asking you what your room number is. On my first morning here before learning the tricks of the trade I was approached by such a young man, my age, and he is now alway calling me and dropping by unexpected. I believe I have put an end to it for now by scheduling a weekly meeting time to work on his English, I'm hoping this will get him off my back for the rest of the time I'm around here. He's not such a bad guy but he just has a way of saying things like “I sit out in front of your dorm in the morning and never see you come out to go to class” with a little laugh at the end that is just a little creepy in my book.

In the same vein of comfort though, some things that are starting to get on my nerves are as follows. The pollution, which is so bad that for the most part I can never actually see the sky except right after a rain storm. Most of the time one can easily look directly into the sun without squinting and just see a red disc hovering over you in the sky, and at night when it's the worst, the air stings your eyes.

This leads to the next thing on the list, the smell. For the most part I've gotten used to the smell, but on days when I leave my air conditioner on all day then leave my room I get a renewed introduction to the olfactory offerings of China. But most of the smells come right here from the dorm building. Now I've been in dorms before and realize that they smell, as college students tend to smell. But it's much worse here for the main reason that there is no authority on campus, no rules anything like those rules that I would expect in an American college, generally people smoke anywhere they want, though those who don't like the smell of smoke in there things, usually hang out in the halls filling them with clouds. And usually at a certain time of night the smell will change from tobacco smoke to more illicit substances, and on weekends literally you can go stand out side the building and still smell the pot smoke that has permeated all 5 floors of the building.

This again leads to the next problem I'm having, my neighbors, specifically my Korean neighbors. As my Irish classmate said, and as any Korean who understands European culture will tell you, the Koreans are the Irish of Asia. They get tremendously drunk every day of the week, and stay up late yelling and running up and down the halls. Cement floors do nothing to mute the sounds, so most nights I have a lot of problems with sleep quality, and find my self wishing the worst hang overs imaginable on them every morning when I awake more sleep deprived than the day before.

Nearing the top of the list, showers. I don't have hot water. Like I don't mean that the water is room temperature, it's cold, it's really really cold, And it's bad enough now when the weather is relatively warm, but in a month or two it's expected to get well below freezing at times, I was told the weather is similar to Wisconsin, and I do not relish the idea of a cold shower on a day that would warrant a winter storm warning back home. In addition to the temperature of the water I also am held to a schedule as to when I can shower. If I don't shower with in a specific time either in the morning or the evening then there's no water at all. Just empty pipes and empty dreams of a less smelly lifestyle.

Next I come to the people that I've met, the other English speakers here. In fact there not that bad, there pleasant to hang out with and everything, but there not the kind of people I would chose to spend time with if they weren't literally the only people I have to relate with. The girls are the biggest problem, they are very much the epitome of ditsy American girls, they party all the time and we can't walk by a hand bag store with out them stopping to gawk. No one really likes the same music as me or shares my ideas. Even though they speak my language I still feel like I'm with a totally different culture than my own.

The food is actually quite good and the only thing that sucks is that I really miss American food, I miss ribs, or hamburgers, I miss butter and cheese, cookies that are actually sweet, and donuts made with more than a teaspoon of sugar, and root beer, I have yet to find anything other than sprite, cola, or this gross mint soda. And I so miss a knife and fork, the simple pleasure of not making each meal an exercise in muscle control and coordination.

Finally I just miss Oregon. I miss Portland, the best city in the world, the rivers the streams, the fact that the wilderness is just minutes away, rather than hours. Fishing, hiking fresh air, and people who understand what I'm saying to them. I miss my friends, I miss camp, where I could spend everyday in the woods and wouldn't have to see a city for the whole summer if I didn't want to. Where I slept on the the ground once or twice a week rather than on a mattress as hard as a concrete slab every night.

But of course this is why I came, I came to subject my self to a challenge that was harder than any challenge I'd endured before. In high school after doing out door school for the first time it made me feel stronger than I'd ever been before, it made me capable of handling situations I'd avoided before hand. After learning the lessons you can only learn by being in charge of 12 unruly 6th graders for a week 22 hours a day. The most important thing I learned is that the only way we can really grow and learn is by being placed in situations where we are uncomfortable, where we are afraid and where we make tons of mistakes. Ever since then I've been doing hard things and putting my self in situations where there was no way out, where quitting was simply not an option, and I think I have grown considerably as a result of it. And this was my biggest one yet, I can't just go home, I have to see this through to the end no matter how hard it gets, and when I come home, I will be stronger and smarter and more able than ever before. Thats why I did this, not just to learn Chinese but to push my self to the next level, take some maturity steroids and take another step towards that person I want to become.

When I was working at camp if I had a good group of kids I would alway talk to them about. “the person they want to be” as opposed to the person they are right now, and I would tell them that every thing they do every day would either lead them closer or farther from that person, and then I would ask if the things they are doing were contributing to that person they wanted to be or not. And since I gave that talk regularly to each new group of kids I had, and it often became a topic of conversation through the week, it was something I often asked my self, and here I think I can really say I am making my self who I want to be, I'm not just being directed by the strongest forces in my environment, but am actually my own propeller. And that so far has been my most comforting thing.

Well anyway that was my therapy for now, already I feel better about it here. I promise I'll have an actual report soon.