Last Post

934 12-19-2010

This is a long time coming.  My father mentioned to me that my family missed my blog while we were chowing down on some bagels this morning and I realized I should probably wrap this sucker up.  I know you’re wondering, raisin and cinnamon bagel with peanut butter and grape jelly, delicious.

I guess it’s only logical to wrap up my time in China before I continue into my semester at Hendrix (in some ways my “China” experience followed me there).

After Tiananmen Square my dad and I went to the Great Wall where little to our surprise it was crowded and smoggy.  Luckily we were smart-ish and decided to hike away from the crowds and actually found ourselves in a slightly less popular part of the wall.  By the way, I don’t use that term “hike” likely, there was a nice 40-55 degree incline on that sucker.  I kept having images of Chinese soldiers in full armor seeing someone climb on top of the wall at one of the higher portions and just thinking to themselves, “fuck it, I’m not running up there.”  Jog up this sucker and your thunder thighs are going to be sputtering sparks by the time you’re done.  Kudos to my dad by the way, with his ankle I’m surprised he got past the stairs, not to mention hike up a portion of it.

That pretty much wrapped up my experience in Beijing.  Honestly I think it was the city I liked the least.  But some of the people were pretty cool I will admit.  Anya for example is supposed to have sent me a Christmas card a few days ago.  And Hongmin (the girl from the hostel) and I still keep in touch.

…BACK TO SHANGHAI.

Despite his ailing health, the time I spent with my father in Shanghai was probably one of my more enjoyable experiences in China.  We did some basic shopping like getting him some shirts made, I got my coat repaired, etc.  But we also spent a lot of time just wondering around, but because of his ankle we were never really in a rush to go anywhere and spent a lot of time just sitting and looking at things.  In fact one of the best things we did was we found a cigar bar in the middle of Shanghai, we sat outside and enjoyed the weather which was a nice 70 degrees, and they served and excellent mojito (MS Word does not recognize this as an actual word, strange) which combined with a Cuban cigar is quite an enjoyable experience.

I think he was quite impressed with the architecture of the city and really enjoyed the Bund and Nanjing Lu at night.  While we were on the Bund we ran into a French family that was enjoying the sights and I told them that actually a lot of my friends here are French and they were very nice.  Their response, “…nice?  Are you sure they’re French?”  I laughed.

Oh, oh, before I forget.  So I had to go get some cash at the station and so my dad hung out in the room while I made the trek to the station.  So I’m just looking down while I’m walking listening to music and suddenly I look up and I am SURROUNDED by police officers.  Not 3 or 4 of these suckers, at least 30.  It wasn’t till I looked around I realized it was because they were in the process of shutting down this restraint/cafeteria place that had literally been rented, put together, and opened while I stayed here.  Sadly I never was able to find out why they were shutting it down, but it was a sight.

So… that’s pretty much it for China.  Made my way back to America, which was much more pleasant then the first time.  Sat next to a Korean family heading to LA on the way back, they were very sweet, and I switched places with their 8 year-old girl so she could see out the window.  You could see the visible relief wash over the dad’s face now that his little girl had something to occupy her time.

Being home though was weird.  I felt… like I was an insider, which after months of being a clear foreigner, was underwhelming.  Getting back into the swing of things at school was even harder, more on a social level then an academic one.   With the absence of a girlfriend my social group was no longer very clearly defined and so a lot of the friends I had before were now in this weird gray zone.  But it actually has worked out fine.  In fact I’m actually closer to some of the people I hung out with before China then I ever was before then, especially Brett, Jack and Grace (Jack’s girlfriend).  I even met some new friends like Rachel, who was my auditing buddy for the semester and introduced me to a number of her slacker friends who I hang out with on occasion.  One guy is called BJ but his intro line is “Hi my name is BJ, but my friends call me Fallacio,” we get along great.

And there is, well was, a girl.  Her name is Fei, from Harbin, China, and we were a cute little item (ok maybe she was just cute, I just kind of stand there being goofy) for awhile.  Sadly she just had to go back home a couple of days ago.  I miss her.  :-/

Fei is on the right

Hendrix Culinary Club is going strong, we’ve gotten a lot of work this semester and are back to being financially stable.  Annie did an awesome job, and Olivia (our new president) will kick just as much butt I’m sure.

Oh I also got cut up pretty badly.  Somewhere along the lines my appendix decided to become a ticking time bomb and nearly exploded so they performed an appendectomy to get that sucker out of there.  Still a little bit on the mend, but I’m almost at a 100%.  Problem is that it messed up my finals schedule, so I have one final I’m working on at home and I get to study for the other two and take’m when I get back to Hendrix.  I’m thrilled.

As far as jobs go I’m still looking, I supposedly have an internship with Zinch.com this coming semester which should turn into a job, but I’m still waiting on the details so we’ll see.  Hopefully it’ll turn out ok.  I might write one more blog post just to let you know where I go, but honestly if you just click on “my website” it’ll show you my LinkedIn.com page which will adequately inform you.

And… that’s it.