August 16, 2012

August 16th, 2012

Was emailing w/a buddy the other day and he commented that he's been reading the diary and said it was good to see me fitting in here like the squarre peg that I am. Not sure if I totally agree...I am pretty round all over and am definately not a square, but do concur that my ample frame doesn't fit their hole perfectly. Kinda feel like an oversized round peg and all it'll take is a little butter to squeeze into their peg board. It's early, but wonder if I'll ever truly accept their customs unequivicably or will try to bend them to my will. Guesssing that it won't be black and white...more of a charcoal grey. For instance, it just smells diifferent here. We were walking down the street the other night and Paul says to me that it smells worse than his worst fart all the time. The next day on the street, we caught a wiff of something new and he volunteered that it smelled like elephant shit. I asked if that was worse that his worst fart and he said, "No way...remember in the 4th grade when I let one go that was so bad that I got sent to the office? That was worse." Where does that kid get it. I went on a study abroad in high school and during the orientation before we left, it was stressed that things in the new country were never weird or better/worse, just different. Have always tried to keep that in mind as new things in life pop up, with mixed results of course, but you have to try. Something they don't do here that I miss is hugging. How you greet people is one of those things that vairies wildly from culture to culture. In Argentina, I liked the kissing thing for the most part, except for when you had to give a dude with stubble a peck on the side of the cheek. Prefer a smooth landing spot personally and guess the barbed wire face is an aquired taste. We have some friends that kiss on both sides, some on only one and it's a bit uncomfortable when you go in for the double dip and they pull away. Personally, I like hugging the girls and shaking most dudes hands with a bro-hug for those gents that are good friends. So it's been a bit of an adjustment getting used to the "bow and don't touch" style here. Have to think (and appreciate) that they they don't like to touch for the fact that everyone sweats so much and smells bad that you just don't want to get a wiff of another's funk. We had to go over to the kids school at 8:30 the other day and it was already roasting. Took a nice cool shower and had on a light t-shirt, shorts and sandals, and was dripping wiith sweat bettween the time we left the AC'd apratment and the elevator downstairs arrived...literally 30 seconds. Another occurance that bumps both Paul and I everytime is when we see a white boy (or girl) break into Mandarin. Wish I could tell you why that is, and am totally envious of those that do, but it always has and hope to figure out why one of these days. Is it some kind of prejudice?. I don't get that way I see some nerd bust into Klingon, although those two cultures are very similar in many respects. And I guess calling the Klingon speaker a nerd is prejudiced? The way beach culture is here has felt very "different" so far. We did a day trip out to reportedly best beach (Fulong) the other day, and as with the other beaches we've been to, they just don't seem to want to go in the water. It's hard to see here, but in the water is this rectangular set of pontoons and no one goes outside of them to swim. And the water never got higher than knee high in this area. . And everyone huddles together, with the accomanying sand getting kicked up. The guys mostly wear boxer/brief speedos, and the girls don't wear bikini's. They scream like banshee's when a wave gets over their knees, and worse yet...they eat with chop sticks on the beach. Check out this shot just down the beach...gorgeous and empty. We got whistled by the lifeguards to get back into the pontoon enclosure for going in down the beach a spell. Anyway, it's going to be hard to convert a nation into developing a "cool" beach scene, but we will do our best. This is one thing where "different" is definately worse. One more snap of the "best" beach... That big green building complex is Lungmen Nuclear power plant which is brand new but has yet to open due to a bunch of controversies. We didn't know that at the time and were sort of freaked a bit having just read the day before about how there are three generations of mutant butterflies around Fukushima since the tsunami last year. They have a lot of earthquakes here. I look at this website every day to check out where the earthquakes have been happening...at least 10 a day above 3.0. Most are too small to feel, although the apartment was rolling the other night during a 5.2, but the frequency of them combined with the horror of last year's disaster makes me sorta expect something really bad is going to happen. Damn, got to heaed over to the kids school for orientation...will try to finish this off later