Wowie Zowie

Writing from my dorm room! Huzzah. (New pic above is me at my webcam!) Here’s my post that I wrote last night when I was still offline:

Today I didn’t do much, but I made myself walk around a bit. While wandering, I came across many people begging. Near the school I’m familiar with the accordian player and the occassional old woman. But further afield, along a busier stretch there are some seriously maimed children begging. Yes, seriously maimed. I’ve been pretty consistent about not ignoring the people asking for money, but I don’t even want to pause for these children. I just speed past. Contrary to my reaction, other people seem to be really interested. The more dramatic the display, the more likely people will stop — pulling their friends along, shaking their heads and dropping a little money in the metal cup. The tradition (explained to me before) is for the people begging to write their stories in chalk on the ground. They’ll keep their heads down, sometimes fully prostrating themselves on the ground. I can’t read their stories, and I don’t know if they’re real. But I have a terrible feeling that these kids don’t get to keep the money they collect. Maybe that’s just twisted of me. I don’t know.

The child that was receiving the most attention today, was maybe 4 years old. He didn’t have any hands, and wrote clutching a piece of chalk between his wrists. His story was very long and his donation cup was actually a large bowl. And it was full. Did someone do this to this poor kid? It makes me crazy either way — why are we just letting him stay there on the sidewalk? Why isn’t there a place for him to go? Is there a place he can go? I don’t know. The feeling of helplessness is really overwhelming.

As I wander the streets here in China, the phrase “sea of humanity” keeps echoing in my head. There are just so many people. It’s clearly and painfully stratified, with the least fortunate literally prostrate on the filthy streets. And we all just walk on by one another. Girls dressed in pristine white dresses and spikey heels. Men in suits. Cocky young boys get behind the wheel of shiney black cars. The sanitation workers dressed in blue uniforms pick up trash along the side of the road. Here we all are.

Obviously, in part I’m suffering from big city shock. It’s probably amplified by my foreignness, feeling isolated while surrounded by so many people. Unfortunately, it’s a familiar feeling. Ugh.

My head hurts and I can’t think what it is I need to be doing. Just going in circles about this and that. It may have just been my lack on caffeine intake this morning. I had a late start. It’s only 8:30 and I’m so tired I can’t think straight. I think it’ll be good to have class begin tomorrow. I’ve been wasting time just now in front of my computer, trying to figure out how to organize all the words and phrases that need to be put in my head. What’s the best way? I was experimenting with a database, and mail merging into a slideshow — a kind of virtual flashcard system. That would let me do all kinds of things — sort by topic, by source, randomize output. I can’t get my computer to cooperate. If I had a little more computer programing knowledge I wouldn’t have to make my software bend over backwards. I understand databases, but the output method is beyond me. I can print something nice, but it’s not really helpful for on-screen use.

Anyway, this is how my head is trying to deal. I’m also suffering from jetlag, although I think that should be subsiding shortly. What am I going to do without excuses?

Like I said, I’m not sure what the best way is to cram all this stuff in my head. And I feel like it’s rejecting what I’m trying. I tried to relax and draw both yesterday and today, but it was wholey unsuccessful. In part, it’s because I’ve never really liked to work exclusively from my imagination. I like a model. And I like people, but right now I’m kind of scared of the people around — they’re liable to ask me what I’m doing. Yesterday I sat on campus and kind of drew people walking by. I attracted some awkward attention. Nothing negative really, but I can’t help but be embarassed. While you’re drawing, it’s not always pretty — not at every stage, so when you have an audience there’s a impulse to cut corners and try to make it look good right away. Just makes a muddy mess, I assure you.

I’m not very happy with my dorm room, but my flatmates are very nice. It’s a little exhausting for them to communicate with me, and I imagine it’s not all that fufilling either. They seem to all have studied English so they’re a little embarassed that they can’t communicate more. But they’re here to learn Chinese not English. It’s a common enough response among the other (non-native english speaking) foreign students.

The dorm has bugs. Ants on my desk and mosquitoes at night. I’m not sure there’s anyway to fix either of these problems really. However, the deal breaker is that the internet isn’t working. One of my flatmates was saying that there’s a wireless network but it requires a password. She said it costs 20 RMB and I need to pay someone at the school. This certianly jives with what someone else told me — she was getting a signal but it required a password. But from here, my little computer can’t detect any signal at all. There’s also a ethernet plug, but it’s not active. The second lady tried her ethernet cable as well without any luck. So, I’ll talk to the office about that tomorrow. The hotel staff isn’t very helpful. They understood I was talking about the internet and the lady just keep talking at me and pointing to the school next door. So that’s what I’ll do.

So, how have I tried to start learning?

1. Post-its on objects around my room.
2. Flashcards made with pinyin/english. About 30 words.
3. Constantly looking things up in my phrase book and sometimes my dictionary.
4. Writing long-hand pinyin of helpful phrases.
5. Typing pinyin, both words and phrases.
6. Invaluable little notebook, where I record: friends’ names (and sometimes phone numbers), new vocab that comes up in conversation, and prepared vocab for potential interactions
7. Pimslur language lessons on iPod.
8. ChinesePod lessons on iPod.

I already feel pressure to have something else going on here. I was going to write a book about my experiences or something, but don’t really feel like my writing skills are up to par. It’s like my language brain in scrambled. Using baby talk in Chinese and broken English is so painful. Jeremy said this made him feel more creative once he sat down to express himself in his native language. I don’t know. I feel so empty.

So if not a book, then what? I guess all the conceivable alternatives involve people. Oh, jeez. I was thinking about finding some artsy people, but my creativity has kind of dried up. Maybe that’s only temporary, but last time I was here I had a very similar feeling. I was also considering website stuff. But thus far it’s been pretty difficult to work out the whole internet thing. It’s not working here in my dorm, and it’s pretty slow elsewhere. Sometimes certain pages won’t even load. I don’t really get that. Anyway, computers are time-consuming and it really complicates things to work in Chinese.

I said I was wasting time at the computer — that’s because there are so many ways to write chinese. You can write it in its many romanized forms or using simplified or traditional characters. I read very little, so I’m sticking with the pinyin. Even so sometimes you can write marks above the vowels to mark the tones, otherwise you can write a number after each syllable. This is all very tedious. English is much better suited to computers at this point — obviously that’s by design.

I should probably teach English. That would be something else. I grabbed an advert from one of the bullitein boards at a foreigner cafe. I’m kind of afraid to call. It says they want experienced teachers, but who knows. The ad was really brief. It might be smart to ask around first, but I’m having trouble asking anyone anything at this point. My courage seems to come in waves. I hope this ebb is only temporary.