Aug 18, 2010

Not my words - but I wish they were:

“I have a very good education, love cultures from over the world, speak 5 languages and so on, I always combat forms of racism...but since I've lived in HK, I can't help myself feeling this pulsing of hatred towards Chinese when:

- they eat with their mouth open
- belch, burp, fart at any given occasion with an air of satisfaction on their face
- they scurry like little rats for the tiny seat on the metro
- when they try to kill pedestrians while driving cars thru crossings
- celebrate their horrible nationalism at every occasion (Makes me wish Japan won the war!)
- and and and...

Then I discovered Taiwan and I made peace with the "real" Chinese culture.
What I found is that it is the lack of most simple civil manners in HK and on the mainland that make Chinese so revolting. Their lack of humanity as well since they only care about themselves (let's be real the family & children is just an expansion of the self).

I hate Chinese culture simply because in this country focused on material wealth, people have no sense for
- beauty
- love
- or the sacred & spiritual
...and believe that their wealth is the panacea for all their horror.

However, Taiwan shows that there is hope for that Chinese people can become humans again.

This discovery made me understand that I am not racist, moreover it helped point out the flaws in my own character: That I shoulp help people more, that I should create more beauty for all to share.

China is this: It plays a role, the role of the black hole, the anti-humanity, the sum of all human ugliness.

If we recognize this, then China will help us improve ourselves and be ready when we have to help it change

It's really hard finding a place that Chinese people don't use as a toilet

Ummmmmmm, Chinese people poop on the Great Wall. You heard me. So, picture the Great Wall of China in your head - you know those tower things? Well, inside, in the corners of each of those - poop.

The Wall is one of the seven wonders of the world. There are obviously droves of tourists going there but unfortunately for me, most are Chinese. I’d say that 90-95% of visitors to the wall are Chinese (and no, I’m not mistaking Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese for Chinese - I can tell the difference by the way they dress and the condition of their teeth). So, rather than using the public restrooms (the only ones in this whole country) that are located at the base of all of the wall’s access points, Chinese people think it’s ok to go to the bathroom RIGHT ON THE WALL. You’d think that they’d have respect for something that’s so iconic of their culture and country, but no. What the f’ing f is wrong with them? ANIMALS! I’m still haunted by the site and disgusting smell I accidentally encountered when I walked around a corner inside one of the towers and saw a sequined-covered woman squatting. I screamed and ran. Awesome; the most memorable experience of my visit to The Great Wall of China involved shit.

It's really hard surviving the HK and China boarder

Every single thing about crossing the boarder between China and Hong Kong makes me want to slit my wrists. Actually, that’s not true: the Hong Kong side of the boarder is mostly civilized (but only by comparison). The Mainland China side…. Oh my god. Ok, where to start….

The bathrooms:

Hong Kong’s side of the boarder: they’re not very clean (because mainland Chinese idiots use them and litterally shit ALLLLL over the place) but at least they have normal, non-squat toilets and are equipped with toilet paper, soap, paper towels and an army of janitors.

China’s side of the boarder: I ONCE made the mistake of going in and I will never do that again. Horrors. Horrors.

The boarder employees:

Hong Kong’s side of the boarder: Quick, efficient, organized, lots of lanes open and all English-speaking staff.

China’s side of the boarder: Retarded. They only ever have one or two lanes open for Foreigners and their employees are shockingly incompetent, rude and slow - even for Chinese people (which is definitely saying something). Brandon, Josh, Nelly and I always choose which line to stand in based on which line has the least number of black people. Oh my god, it takes a boarder/customs official about ten minutes to clear a black person. Why don’t they at least try to hide their racism like America does?

There is one really bad part about the Hong Kong side. When you enter and exit Hong Kong you need to wait in the “Foreigner’s line” which means you’re in the same line as Mainland Chinese “people.” That means that you’re going to be cut in front of CONSTANTLY. Chinese people are uncivilized barbarian animals and have zero concept of waiting in line and will do anything including physically elbowing and shoving to get around you. Brandon and I have gotten ruthless and shameless when it comes to stopping “cutters.” We elbow right back at them even if they’re little grandmas and put our arms straight out in front of them. We yell and cause scenes which is TOTALLY offensive in China because of their “saving face” culture. Once, I kept seeing Chinese people walking straight up to the front of the long-ass line and getting right in front. I grabbed two guys by the backs of their shirts and yelled at them! It was soooooooooo satisfying. HAHAHAHAA! The other god-awful thing about having to wait in line with mainlanders is the fact that Chinese people don’t really understand personal space. They’ll LITERALLY LEAN ON YOU. They touch you, they lean their bag on you or put it on your foot, they get so close that you can feel their toxic cat-eating breath on the back of your neck. GOD!!!!!!! This is all made extra worse by the fact that most mainlanders don’t bathe regularly and most definitely have never heard of deodorant. Ohhhh, and then there’s the human excrement - yeah, Mainlanders let their children potty on the ground right there in line. One time Brandon and I saw a lady making her little boy pee into a plastic baggie. We thought she was the most considerate Chinese person that we’d ever seen!!

As if the boarder couldn’t get any worse, Brandon/Josh/Nelly and I once got stranded there on our way into Hong Kong. So, when we go to HK, we’d take a bus from Shunde (the city we lived in) that’d drive us to the boarder and then wait for us to go through customs then the same bus would take us all the way into the city. Of course, our worst nightmare happened - the bus didn’t wait for us. After being stranded for like two hours, without anyone willing to talk to us or help us, we finally paid for another bus (after we paid upfront for the one that left us) to take us to Hong Kong. Awesome. Of course we tracked down the bus company’s office that f’ed us and demanded our money back. After a lot of almost-yelling, the assholes gave us half of our money back for two tickets - but not four. WTF?!??!?!?!?!?!??!?!??!?!??!?!?!?

It's really hard finding decent rice... in China?

Chinese people suck at… everything. Music, Food, Medicine, Porn, Governing, grooming/bathing, being generous - or caring - or being good stewards of the earth. But what’s one thing that you’d think that they’d be good at? Cooking rice, right?? Well, you’d of course be wrong. Yes, Chinese people eat rice with absolutely every meal but that doesn’t mean that they possess the mental aptitude to do it right. I’d say that Brandon and I had satisfactorily cooked rice less than ten times while living in China. Yes, the other 300 times (I spent ten months in china and ate rice at least once a day) the rice has either been overcooked-mush or was crunchy and undercooked. For a long time I thought that Chinese people ment to cook their rice all wrong but my Chinese coworkers repeatedly would complain about how the rice was cooked whenever we went to restaurants together. So there. It’s not just me.

It's really hard to believe, but the kid lived

So, I discovered that there was a huge, industrial-sized staple sticking out of my classroom’s carpet. I discovered it because one of my students was rolling around on the ground and sliced his leg open. Holy shit - he was gushing blood and screaming. I started cleaning him up with my roll of toilet paper (which I use as my whiteboard eraser) and my TA ran out then back into the class room. She brought with her THE RAG. THE RAG is the source of the death/decay smell that’s coming from our school’s balcony where the school’s sink is at and where the school’s Chinese staff prepare their meals everyday. See, they cook meat for every meal and they use THE RAG to clean up all of the bloody meat messes from their chopping block and to wash their dishes. Since there isn’t any soap out there, nothing is ever properly cleaned and that nasty, disgusting, rag has become absolutely putrid but they just keep using it - day after day after day.

That very rag, it was used to clean up my student’s cut. Why didn’t I stop this? I don’t know - it just happened so fast - I was too in shock - too worried about getting The Plague from the kid’s blood - too excited about telling Brandon about this and about writing this all down. So, it happened, THE RAG was pushed into his cut until all of the bleeding stopped. It then got used to scrub the blood out of the carpet (wow- she got a lot out for not having soap or any cleaning sprays) and then it was rinsed out (still no soap) and left right next to the chopping block to be used for lunch the next day.

One last thing - a few days later I noticed that no one had taken care of the giant staple sticking out of the carpet. I told my bitch-boss to have someone take care of it and no one ever did. I had to pry it out with two pairs of scissors because I‘m sure they would have never did it. It’s really, really, really sad that I’M the one that cares the most about the safety of my Chinese students - because let me tell you….

Jul 19, 2010

It’s really hard not brutally murdering your boss

Our school fucked us over. Big time.

On the last day of our contract, Brandon, Josh, Nelly and I were owed 21,833 RMB each ($3,235. each!!!!) for our last month’s salary, flight reimbursement, bonus (which we fully qualified for according to our contracts) and deposits. Long story short, our boss decided to just pay us for our last month’s salary and screw us over on the rest.

We’re all still in shock about the whole situation. We were promised this money, we have contracts, but our boss didn’t care. I think in total, we spent about 11 hours arguing with our boss over the phone – through his 21 yr old son and our boss’s 25 yr old girlfriend, May (our boss is like 50 and married to a different slut!) – because he was SITTING OUTSIDE the school in his van refusing to face any of us. Yeah, I’m serious, what a FREAK! I’ve never in my life encountered such unprofessional, rude, heartless people in my life. GOD! If that whore May laughed in our faces one more time, Nelly and I were going to shove her 4 inch glittered heel through her skull!! AHHH!!!

God, it was such a mess and SO PAINFUL. The blatant lying from our boss was endless. At one point in the 11-hour negotiations, our Boss was seeming more amiable and told us that if we taught a couple more classes for free (our contracts were over but the semester wasn’t), he’d give us our full bonuses (5,000RMB/$740.USD each). Of course we immediately agreed and our boss’s son shook Brandon’s hand and promised (PROMISED!!) that we’d get that money. Guess what happened. I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE THAT WE LET CHINESE PEOPLE PLAY US LIKE THAT!!!!!!!!!!

Their reason for not paying us? They had so many excuses but the first that they tried was that we were “bad teachers.” Brandon and I luckily saved ALL of the reviews that each of our students filled out. Averaging all of our scores, Brandon was at 98% and I had a 97% along with hundreds of great comments from the kids. Then, we had ten months worth reviews from our managers which averaged 95%. We showed all of these to our boss’s son (who reported to his Dad who was sitting out in the f’ing van) and he just said that our students/managers were just being polite (mind you, our boss or his son had never seen us teach). So, we asked the boss’s son to sit-in on our classes (teaching students for FREE by the way). Of course, we taught the best classes we’ve EVER taught and did a PERFECT job. Our boss’s son couldn’t deny it, he said we were great teachers so then he moved on to a different reason for not paying us.

“The school gave you free housing for the past ten months – you owe us money!” WTF?! It says in our contracts that we’re to receive free housing and utilities! Since when does ANY teacher in China have to pay for housing? Well, after several other tries, this is the excuse they settled on. We argued and argued but there was nothing we could do. Chinese people don’t respond to logic (or contracts) and they correctly pointed out to us that if we try contacting the police, they’ll just need to pay them off with 200 rmb ($29.00).

Oh my god. The four of us need therapy. Do you know what arguing over money we’ve already earned with lying, manipulating, ass-hole Chinese people will do to a person after 11 hours?! All four of us are still having violent dreams about torturing and murdering our boss, his two sons (one of which is only five) and that whore-girlfriend.

This whole experience has for sure been one of the worst experiences of my life. We told all of our Australian/British friends in China what happened and they all said something close to “duh!!” Apparently it’s rare to not get screwed on your last paycheck from a Chinese school and that most people expect it and even factor it into their budgets. I guess it’s our own faults for not seeing this coming. Fuck you Chinese people. You win. I give up.

It's really hard not being home!

AMURICAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

Dear America, I need to apologize. I had no idea how f’ing awesome you were.

In less than a week after moving to China, I had a total epiphany – America is the best country everrrrrrr!!

See, I didn’t know it before. When I thought of America, I thought of Bill O’Riley, Ann Coulter, Lynndie England, Cheney and Palin. I thought of fundamentalist evangelical Christians, Proposition 8, capital punishment, anti-stem cell research protesters, uneducated morons teaching Intelligent Design and abstinence-only, gun violence and pedophile catholic priests. I pretty much hated America. In fact, the original title of this blog was “Escape from the US.”

So all those people and things I just listed, they’re awful. But I learned that it can be worse, like waaaay worse. China. I can’t even explain to you how fucked this country is. I mean, come on, they block facebook!

Living in China was worse than what I imagine American prison to be. Our prisons at least have soft beds, great gyms, decent food, muscley men and English-speaking TV stations. God, China, fuck you! You ruined my life for ten f’ing months and I don’t even have a pile of cash to show for all that suffering – I think I was getting paid in rice.

I CAN’T WAIT TO BE BACK IN AMERICA!! I’m even going to totally LOVE stuff that I used to hate! For example, I’m SUPER EXCITED to see hundreds of HUGE, overly jacked-up, gas-guzzling, mud-covered Ford and Chevy trucks with “I bleed red, white & blue” and Dale Earnhart bumper stickers and full gun-racks driven by obese, red necks with eagle, “Jesus is Lord” and swastika tattoos in my home town – Battle Ground, Washington. YES!!! God bless America!!

You think I’m joking don’t you? I’m definitely not!! I now love everything American and hate everything Chinese. F’ing china. They don’t even have FORTUNE COOKIES here! I’ve eaten in a Chinese restaurant everyday for ten months - China, you owe me A LOT of fucking fortune cookies.

It's really hard breathing when you know it's killing you

China prolly gave me cancer. Our city (Shunde) has the highest cancer rate in the country – 45%. Yeah, 45% of people living in Shunde get cancer. Since people are too stupid to MOVE THE FUCK OUT OF THIS CITY, they’re also too stupid to figure out what’s causing the high cancer rate. The water? The pollution? The pesticides? When we ask about it, everyone always says “no one knows.” This includes two of Brandon’s students who are Doctors.

It's really hard knowing that China's air drifts over to the rest of the world


FUCK YOU NATURE!!!!!!!!!!!

Have you seen that episode of South Park where the Japanese people travel around the world killing dolphins and whales and yelling “FUCK YOU DOLPHIN AND WHALE!!!!!?” Ok, well if the Chinese were in this episode, they’d be yelling “FUCK YOU NATURE!!!!!!!!”

The littering here – you wouldn’t believe it!!! The amount of trash on the ground is shocking. Chinese people litter CONSTANTLY. They just drop whatever is in their little, dirty, yellow hands (HAHAHAHAAA) or just chuck it out of their car or bus window. One time I bought all of my students ice cream (it was chocolate/jellied aloe flavor) from a 7-11 type store. They all just pulled the wrappers off and dropped them. I yelled at them to pick them up (there was a trash can like 5 feet away) but they wouldn’t!!! I had to do it!



There are no emission laws in this country. Cars/tucks/buses just spew pollution like you’ve never seen before. And no one cares!! The pollution is crazy-thick here. We’ve seen patches of blue sky less than ten times in the past nine months in China and we’ve only seen stars once. The air is so thick. And the black pollution covers everything. We have to line-dry ALL of our clothes (there are no dryers in china) inside of our apartment because if we leave them outside to dry, they’ll be super dirty after just a few hours in that air. Oh, and my boogers are always black too! (Kai, do you love that?!)

Our apartment complex used to have over 300 trees surrounding it. How do I know how many? Because I went to the 23rd floor, looked down, and counted 300+ holes in the ground. They ripped them all out about five months ago. Why? Because: FUCK YOU NATURE!!!!!

"It's really hard" description of every bed in this country!

My back and shoulders are killing me!! Do you know how hard Chinese beds are?! It’s a joke! They look like regular, mattress but they don’t feel like it at all. On the top where you sleep, the mattresses have a sheet of wood with a 1/8” thick layer of felt stapled to that and covered in the mattresses’ floral-print fabric. Chinese mattresses are ALL THE SAME and they’re the DEVIL. And why do Chinese people sleep on devil beds? ...because Chinese doctors tell people that sleeping on a completely hard, flat bed will make you live longer. Morons. I want my memory foam!

Jun 25, 2010

In China, driving down the wrong side of the road is more popular than eating rice.

China accounts for just three percent of the world's cars, yet has 21 percent of the world's traffic fatalities. “Research shows that every day in China at least 300 people are killed in traffic accidents, ranking the country top in the world for both the death toll and the death rate. And the figure is accelerating by 10 per cent every year."

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST – I hate Chinese drivers! Seriously, the government should outlaw cars. These people are 100% incapable of any component of driving. Turn signals, mirrors, seatbelts and children's car seats are never, ever ever used. Drivers don't stop at stop signs or lights, they never stay between the lines, they make U turns in the middle of the road (not really a u-turn – more like a six-point turn), they swerve like you've never seen before, they're always texting/talking on the phone while driving, they stop (in the middle of two lanes) on the highways, they drive drunk CONSTANTLY and they're pretty much always driving waaaaaaaay under the the speed limit. Chinese roads, parking lots and even sidewalks (why do they think it's ok to drive a car on a fucking sidewalk?!?!?!) are like war zones.
Watching people try to park their cars is one of Brandon's and my favorite hobbies in china. We've seen people park their cars in the center of a lane of traffic. We've seen people park on sidewalks. We've seen one car literally park diagonal and take up three parking spaces. And then there's parallel parking. Before I leave, I NEED to make a video of a Chinese person trying to parallel park. Usually, it involves the driver smashing into the cars in front and behind about 30 times and ends 10 minutes later with the driver pulling out of the spot and just parking with their car's ass hanging straight out into the street. It's awesome!!!

Crossing a street in China is SUPER hazardous. You never know where a car could be coming from (they're always driving on the wrong side of the road or hauling ass out of parking spots) and you better believe that NO ONE is going to slow down or swerve to avoid hitting you. I've probably spent a total of 15 hours in the past nine months waiting to cross streets in China. FUCK!!!!

Every foreigner has crazy driving stories. My favorite is when one of Brandon's business English students drove us to go play badminton. The gym that we were going to was about six miles away. It took us 25 minutes to get there. People on bikes were passing us! No, there wasn't any traffic, or construction and we didn't get lost. She was just a retarded Chinese driver.

I just couldn't possibly say it better myself!

I borrowed this from a China expat forum:

“I live in china right now and I can honestly say that from my experience, most of the people are obsessed with becoming rich and will claw and cheat their way to the top. It’s a dirty, overcrowded, rude atmosphere. The people are kind to me because I’m a foreigner but I see them treat one another like crap on a daily basis. I find myself saying hello to maintenance staff rather than acknowledging the existence of businessmen because I find those who have attained some sort of power in this country to be wretched human beings. The regular people are great, albeit uneducated and all the frustrations that brings, but it is the richest of the Chinese that are cruel, abusive human beings. Such is communism, I suppose.”

After going into a gross, nasty, very-chinese bathroom:

Mariel: Don't worry, I brought soap!!
Nelly: Thank god!
Eveny: You carry soap with you?!
Mariel: of course, because there’s no soap in Chinese bathrooms. Do you want some?
Eveny: (laughing) No, thank you (Nelly and I exchange grossed-out glances)

I'm not kidding, this is what eveny says: Why are you washing your hands with soap?
Mariel: Nelly and I rate bathrooms on an A, B, C scale in SE Asia. An “A bathroom” means that you'll only get Hepatitus A from using it. A “B” bathroom means that you'll get Hep A and B from using it. A “C bathroom” means that you'll get all three. This was definitely a “C bathroom.”
Eveny: hahahaahahaaa!!
Mariel: You know, in America, all bathrooms have soap and toilet paper
Eveny: WOW!!
Mariel: and EVERYONE washes their hands. In fact, if you work in a restaurant and you're seen not washing your hands in a bathroom before returning to work, you'll get fired.
Eveny: WHAT??? That's terrible! Why?
Mariel/Nelly: Because it’s DISGUSTING!
Eveny: What if you work in a restaurant and you eat and drink too much and you have to go to the bathroom 10 times. Do you have to wash your hands ten times?
Mariel/Nelly: ABSOLUTELY!
Eveny: WOW! So strange!

Here's the best conversation I've ever heard:

Nelly: I have something that's going to change your world (giving Icy a Tampon)
Icy: What is it?
Nelly: A tampon, you use it rather than a pad
Icy: Screaming: It's SO BIG!!
-icy is crazy because it’s one of those tiny OB tampons that's thinner than your pinky finger and only 1.5 inches long
Nelly: you have to try it. You'll never want to use a pad ever again!
Icy: Never, never, never!!!!!!
Nelly: Pleasseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!! You'll love it!! Do it for me! PLEASEEEEEEEEEEE!!
Icy: only if you'll try a pad
Nelly and Mariel: EWWWWWWWW!!!!!! Grossssssssssssssssssssss!!!
Nelly: FINE, I’ll try a pad if you'll try a tampon
Icy: but wait, when you use a tampon, how do you go pee?
Nelly: What? Why would you not be able to pee?
Icy: because the tampon blocks it

It's really hard teaching English in China. So, what's it like?

Brandon, Nelly, Josh and I have been in Foshan China working for a Chinese-owned English training center for both children and adults for nine months now. Here's the dealio:

Getting the job was super easy. Schools in Mainland China don't care about your lack of teaching qualifications. They don't care about your criminal background as a convicted rapist or pedophile. They don't care that you never graduated from high school. It doesn't matter if you're an alcoholic. And they don't care if your first language isn't English. There's only one thing that matters: that you're white. They want blonde teachers with blue or green eyes. That's the ideal. They'll settle for brunettes but if you have black hair – good luck. If you're Black or Asian, it's going to be nearly impossible for you to find a teaching job making a fair amount of money even if you're a legitimate, certified teacher.
Once you have the job, you almost always have to sign a contract. This is because the Chinese company (schools are companies here) wants to be able to treat you like absolute crap without having to worry about you quitting. See, the contract allows the school to hold a percentage of your paycheck every month and then at the end of the contract (most contracts are for ten or twelve months), they're supposed to return it to you as a reward for staying until the end. Nice bonus: they pay you your own money that you've already earned. Brandon, Josh, Nelly and I are all in a ten-month contract from September until June 30th. Its been the longest ten months of my life.

The arguing and fighing is constant. Our company HATES us: they're used to idiot teachers that just bend over and take it but we've been fighting back with almost everything. We're not asking for anything other than for them to follow the contract!! We just want to be paid for overtime hours, paid on time, given our housing/gym allowance, given our cell phones as promised, given access to showers that have at least warm water in the freezing winter, and paid on the last day of our contracts rather than a month later like they're proposing.

As for the students, I bet you're imagining adorable, big-cheeked, disciplined, respectful kids because that's what I pictured before I came to China. So, picture this: super dirty, loud, rude, violent, spitting/coughing, BRATS that won't listen to a thing you say. That's what we have. Yes, most of the girls are super sweet (although still crazy dirty) but it's hard to focus on them when the rest of the class is so evil.

And we don't even make good money here!!! Our pay has increased from 7,000 rmb to 9,500rmb over the past nine months. I know, pathetic. I used to make double working at a non-profit! But the good thing is that the cost of living is next to nothing. Our school provides free housing and utilities so our only real expense is food (which is between $1.-$3./meal) and traveling.

“This sounds terrible?! Why do you stay?” I knowwww, and the worst part is… you have to live in China too!! So why have I stayed? One reason: Brandon. Yes, he's miserable here too but he has wanted to stay because of the money. I know, it's dogshit money but because of the low cost of living (and the lack of anything worth buying), he has been able to save more money than he ever has before. At least he knows that he owes me (BIGTIME) for staying here with him!
PS- I know this is a terribly-written post. I'm Drunk!!!

It's really hard living with SAVAGES!!

“A 2003 study reported by CNN revealed that bank notes from China had 178,000 different types of bacteria and were home to 9,500 organisms from the e-coli family (Brown, 2003)."

We've all heard those crazy stats that 99.9% of all American money has fecal matter on it, right? I used to doubt that this was really true – I mean, who the hell gets shit on their hands?! Well now I know and I'll tell you who: the Chinese!!!!!!!!!!! That's right! There are tons of Chinese in America and I'm blaming them for getting poop on our money!!!!!

Yeah, let me tell you how this works. As I've talked about ENDLESSLY for the past ten months, All the Chinese people that I know have absolutely no personal hygiene so it shouldn't surprise you that they don't see toilet paper as a necessity. Lots of them use it but more of them don't. “Don't you need to wipe?” I ask my friends, they say “if we forget to bring toilet paper, we just use our hand to wipe.” YEAH. Why are they not embarrassed to tell me this? Because they don’t think it's gross – AT ALL. When they see my distressed reaction (I'm counting the times they’ve touched my laptop) they add “but we always wash our hands!!!” Here's the thing about Chinese people washing their hands, they don’t use soap, EVER. Public restrooms in restaurants, shopping malls, movie theaters, schools, grocery stores and even hospitals never ever ever have soap dispensers. I've been in plenty of Chinese homes too and people never have soap next to their bathroom sink either. While I’ve been fishing my “soap baggie” out of my purse after using a public bathroom I’ve watched Chinese people “wash their hands” a million times. What they do is turn the water on, put their hands under the tap for two seconds then turn the water off and leave. They don’t carry their own soap like I do, and they don’t even rub their hands together for a second. UNCIVILIZED SAVAGES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's really hard being the fattest girl in all of China.

Chinese girl are really, really skinny. Most of our friends are about 5'2” and 90 lbs. I'd estimate that this is the average in Southern China from what I've seen. Do you know this make me feel?! I'm surrounded by literally half a billion stick figures!!! I'm a giant!!!!!!!!!

And I don't get it either. How are all these Chinese girls so skinny?!
Chinese food doesn’t seem healthy to me. Do you know what I think the most popular Chinese food is? McDonald’s and KFC. Seriously, Chinese people eat it like every day. If you ask any of my students what their favorite food is: “Mydonaah's Hanboaboa” or “Mydonaah's French frieahhhs. Yeah, by the way, they don't say “McDonald's” they say “Mydonaah's” because that's the name that McDonald's uses in their commercials to make it easier for Chinese people to say. ANYWAYS, so what else to Chinese people eat? Fried rice, fried noodles, fried vegetables, fried meat, fried dough – they use insane amounts of oil. And it's not like Chinese people don’t eat junk food. They go crazy for these little plastic cups/tubes of fruit –flavored jelly (PUKE!!!!!) and they LOVE potato chips, cookies (which they call biscuits – weird) and chocolate. And, Chinese people LOVE ice cream. A Chinese grocery store has a significantly bigger ice cream section than an American grocery store. Their flavors are fucked – like corn flavor or chocolate/green tea or jellied aloe vera/strawberry – but they LOVE the stuff and definitely eat it every day.

So, as you can see, I don't understand how they're all so thin. And it's not like they exercise either. All of our friends think its SO WEIRD that Brandon and I work out. Literally none of our friends have done any exercising since high school when they were required to do badminton, ping pong, ballroom dancing and basketball in gym class. None of them have ever in their lives used a treadmill or lifted weights. Never, ever. They think that Brandon and I are the weird ones!!
Brandon and I use our apartment complexes’ “gym” (two tredmills, some free weights and a 100% broken bowflex machine). I call it “our gym” because for the past six months, we have literally been the only two people that have bought “membership cards.” Our complex has 644 apartments and like I said, Brandon and I are the only ones that set foot in there.

I think that being around skinny people all day, everyday for the past nine months has really gotten to Brandon and me. We feel like total cows!! Its been making me want to work out way more than usual. I've been spending gazillions of hours climbing the stairs in our apartment building and even running (which I HATE) for 25 minutes a day and doing more and more weights too. Having 90 pound friends is really good motivation!! But, I haven't lost ANY WEIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!! Brandon, on the other hand, has been eating at McDonalds five meals a week and has lost tons of weight. 60 pounds actually. He does work out super hard but it's so not fair!! He's so skinny now! Every time we go to the grocery store, we weigh ourselves and every time he weighs one or two pounds less than the time before and I'm always the same. It's so heartbreaking for me!! So, I asked my friend Lindy if Chinese girls had a trick to losing weight. She said that I should start exercising for three minutes a day, five days a week. Yeah, that's what she told me.

Jun 16, 2010

It's really hard having nothing but Chinese junk

I sooooo have the rage virus right now. The second computer charger that we've bought in five weeks just blew up - FUCK!!!! And is the store going to give us a replacement?! No - they're going to laugh in our faces and charge us for a new one. Dollar store junk - I HATE dollar store junk and that's all there is in China. What the fuck is wrong with chinese people?! Why don't they demand quality products?!

Everything is shit!! Our school's computer, fax machine and printer are broken more often than not, almost all of the students' desks are broken, my classroom fan just broke, the schools rice cooker is busted and the keyboard that I'm using right now doesn't have 's' or 'w' keys so everytime I want to type those letters I have to copy/paste from a word document!!!

Everything we've ever bought in China has fallen apart!! The hems on my chinese clothes have unraveled, the designs on my t-shirts have peeled off, two pairs of headphones stopped working, brandon's i-pod only stays charged for 30 minutes, our heater randomly turns on/off, the bristles fell out of my new toothbrush, and my shoes collapsed after getting wet because it turned out that they were made of pleather-lined cardboard.

When we moved into our first apartment in China, everything was broken: the air conditioner, the washing machine, the TV, the shower head, most of the doors knobs, the window latches, the hot water heater, the microwave (which happened to be the only microwave in this whole country), the front door's lock and you could only flush the toilet by taking the top off and pulling the chain thing inside. Even though we just moved in, the landlord (who is one of our school's managers) told us that we had to pay for all of the repairs ourselves. AWESOME. Oh, and my other favorite part - all of the door frames are cut too big so there's 1-2 centemeter gaps on everydoor that we've had to fill with layers and layers and layers of tape.

God!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I want to go hoommmmmmmmeeeeee!!!!!

A story from one of my TAs

You know how China has the "one-child policy?"

Yvonne's high school was located right next to a govmt-run abortion clinic. She told us that every couple of days (and sometimes multiple times in one day) she and the rest of the students could see and hear pregnant women being literally dragged out of police cars and into the clinic. When the cries of these women would interrupt a teacher's lesson, the teachers would always tell them not to feel sympathy for the women because they're criminals and deserve what is happening. Just as awful, they could see the womens’ husbands and family members crying and screaming for her outside of the clinic's gate. After I calmed down from my subsequent culturally-insensitive freak out, I asked her: you mean to tell me that day after day for three years of high school you watched this happen? HOW could you stand it? She said that sometimes when she could hear a woman crying for help and begging for the life of her baby, she’d feel pity for her, but she knew that “it's true, the women are criminals.”

So happy I'm not a chinese girl

My school doesn't hire guys: only girls that are age 24 or younger. Their ideal age is 20. Why? Because of looks and because the younger they are, the more easy it is to exploit and manipulate them. The owner of the school obviously knows that you can treat a young, sweet, innocent Chinese girl like absolute shit for a ridiculously long period of time before she'll even consider quitting.

I think my dear friend Lindy has had the worst experience. I had to rip this story out of her but she eventually told me everything.

Lindy was originally a student at my school and has been trying to get a job here for two years. Her dream was to have a job where she'd work with real western foreigners so that her English would improve and be good enough so she could eventually get a high paying job as an interpreter abroad. To get the job at our school, she had to go through the worst interview process I've ever heard of.

- She's 24 years old which is almost too old for my school. The other girls at the school convinced her that she'd never get the job unless she said she was 21.
- Her interview (with the school’s evil owner: Brian and his succubus assistant, Selina) was two hours long!! During this interview, they didn't ask her a single question about her English skills or her education. Not one. ALL the questions (sparing a few about her last job) were personal. They started off by asking her if she had a boyfriend. In China, this is a very rude question even between teenage girls let alone in a f'ing job interview! They wanted to know everything about her boyfriend, how long they'd been together, if her parents approved of the relationship and if they were living together. SO RUDE! They asked her over and over again if she wanted to work at the school so that she could get an American husband. Apparently Brandon and Josh are available?
- At one point in the interview, Brian made her put her hair into a ponytail and pull her bangs back so that he could “see her face.” Then they made her stand up and walk back and forth in the room. AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'd scream!!! She was applying for a Teacher’s Assistant job!!!
- So, at the end of the interview, they told her that they usually don’t hire girls that look like her but they’d give her a chance. They told her that if she cut her hair and went to a hospital (no doctor’s offices in our city) to get some skin creams to improve her complexion, they'd hire her. For some crazy reason, she had 6 inches of her beautiful hair cut off and she took the job.

It's really hard watching Chinese people eat.

I told brandon that I'm drawing the line: no more eating with chinese people. That's it - I can't handle it anymore. I mean, come on, my weiner dog has better table manners!!

So, first of all, they chew and talk with their mouths open - always. it's not considered rude in China. You've never seen anything like this. The smacking sound is SO LOUD and food falls and falls and falls out of their mouths. They're worse than a two year old: I'm not exagerating!! And when they talk to you, little pieces fly out - SO GROSS!!!!!!!!! It's extra bad too because of the shit they eat too. They don't eat normal things like salads or pasta or even fried rice - it's always weird chinky shit like eels or fried fish-head or jellied chicken feet. And what the fuck? - how do they somehow get food all over their faces?!?!? Their lips and entire mouth area always, always, always get covered in whatever they're eating - GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ohhhh, and then there's the amount of time it takes!!! Ummm, do you have three hours free for lunch?? No? Then don't invite your chinese friends. Ok, so one time our four chinese TAs invited themselves to go to lunch with Brandon, Josh and me to a "fancy western restauarnt." Here's how this went down:

12:00 Arrive at the restaurant - the TAs FREAK OUT because of how fancy this restarant looks (it's similar to a "Sherrie's" which is super nice for China) and they start taking pictures of EVERYTHING with their three cameras (you know how Asians are). They pose for pictures with the salt/pepper shakers, then with the "pretty water glasses," the "non-smoking table" sign (they'd never seen one before), the silverware, the menus, the FREE napkins (free!! - holy cow!!!!) the flowers on the table and of course with the toothpick holder. This takes about 20 minutes. FML.

12:20 Choosing what to order from the menu: aparently the most difficult task they've ever completed in their LIVES. I think the TAs asked the servers over 100 questions EACH. By the time they ordered their food, we had been at the restaurant for AN HOUR.

1:10 Our food arrives - now the TAs have to spend 20 minutes holding up their plates of food and posing for photos.

1:25 Brandon, Josh and Mariel are done with our food and we've paid our bill - Chinese TAs are still taking pictures

-for the next HOUR we had to turn our heads away from the girls so we didn't have to see them eat. How do they take so f'ing long?!?!?! AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! I can't keep going - remembering this is probably giving me high blood pressure! This isn't an isolated insident either, we've gone out to eat with different chinese people TONS of times and it always takes tripple the amount of time that it should and always makes me want to puke. But, at least I don't have to do it ANYMORE!

It's really hard not laughing in their faces

Here are a few of my fav “English Names” that my students have had:

Sugar baby
Rainmund
Christ
Whitey
Apple (I'd say that 5% of all Chinese girls have this as their “engish name”)
Pizza
Nana
DoDo (this one is SUPER common)
Mimi
Bobo (yeah, I know. It's super common too)
Gigi
Kiki
Teddy
Jackie (probably 15% of boys have this name)

Super annoying Placebo effect

Before Brandon, Josh, Nelly and I started at our school, our Chinese TAs had never drank alcohol in their lives. After months of peer pressuring, the pussies finally gave in and we got 22-year old Melon and 23 year old Memory (this is what happens when Chinese girls choose their own “engish names") to drink with us. We got some red wine and gave them each a shot glass-full of it (Chinese people drink EVERYTHING out of shot glasses). After drinking two little sips, they started acting SUPER DRUNK – swaying, giggling, slurring and then falling. I knew they were full of shit so I made them keep drinking. Melon took one more little girl sip and PUKED. She didn't even finish the f'ing shot glass!!

Jun 2, 2010

I don't know why we even bother going to see movies! Prince of Persia in a chinese movie theater...

There is only one thing that can distract me away from staring at Jake Gyllenhaal's amazing arms – screaming Chinese children with LED flashlights.

Come on! Seriously, COME ON! Why would you bring your four year old and six year old into a movie theater and equip them with freakishly bright LED flashlights and tell them that they can go play, run and SCREAM right IN FRONT OF THE MOVIE SCREEN FOR TWO HOURS?!?!??!?!?!?!??!?!? And why are Brandon and I the only ones that noticed?! Oh yeah – because EVERYONE else was too busy yelling into their cell phones.

May 28, 2010

Afraid of a 120lb chinese man?

So, our Chinese friend Angela has to take a two-hour long bus ride twice a week. One time, she fell asleep and when she woke up, the man sitting next to her told her that a guy had unzipped her purse (which was sitting on her lap) and stole her cell phone out of it then got off at the next stop. So, she's telling me this story and OF COURSE my first question is – why didn't the man sitting next to you stop him and wake you up?! She said: “he couldn't! What if the thief hit him or hurt him?”

Ummmmmm, I think that 99% of Americans that were witnessing a sleeping girl getting jacked would do something, right?!?! If I saw a man unzipping a little Chinese girl's purse – I would yell “HEY!” without even thinking – duh!

So, Later I heard her telling the story to Brandon and two of our Chinese TAs (teacher's assistants). Naturally, Brandon asked the same question as I did. Angela and both TAs defended the guy! They said that if they saw a thief, they wouldn't say anything either because the thief might hit them.
China is so f'ed up.

Don't let our future adoption agency see this

So, Brandon and I are going to adopt babies someday! I'm thinking in maybe six or seven years but I still love planning it out!!!

Ok, so I want to get two babies: one from India and one from China. Since both Indian and Chinese people love baby boys and hate baby girls (slight exaggeration, I guessss) we will end up with girls for sure. And I already picked out their names!! The Chinese baby will be named Ping Pong and the Indian baby will be Aloo Paneer (which means Spinach and Cheese: my fav Indian food!!). Since Brandon and I have DRASTICALLY different ideas when it comes to parenting, we’ve decided that it'd be best if he took one kid and I took the other. Plus, it'll be really fun to be competitive on whose kid gets better grades/becomes the most successful! Hahaaha!!

Aloo Paneer (Mariel's Indian baby):

-My child is going to be strictly vegetarian, of course. She's Indian, so duh.
-I'll encourage Aloo Paneer to do sports but I won't pressure/force like Brandon. Instead, I'll pressure/force her to do 4-H and FFA. She'll be the best at showing cows/goats/llamas/rabbits/poultry and she'll also do 4-H's competitive cooking competitions!!!! YAY! She’s so lucky!
-She better graduate from college by the time she's 20. No excuses.
-Atheism isn't all that fun and there are no holidays so I think I'm going to raise her to be either Jewish or Hindu. I haven't decided which yet.
-If Aloo ever decides to vote republican/date a republican, join the military, join a sorority, become an evangelical, eat meat or drive a truck, I'll disown her.

Brandon has it all planned out too:

Ping Pong (Brandon's Chinese baby)

-Brandon is going to make Ping Pong SUPER athletic. She's going to play Softball, basketball, golf, tennis and also do Gymnastics, Tae Kwon Do, Judo and Jujitsu. Oh, and figure skating like Michelle Kwon.
-Ping Pong will be allowed to eat meat and fast food for probably every meal.
-If Ping pong EVER tries drinking alcohol, smoking or doing drugs (with her sister Aloo who'll be allowed to experiment), he'll disown her and never speak to her again.
-Ping Pong will be attending a private, all-girls school and she's not allowed to have a boyfriend until she's 40. And he has to be white.

Pros of adopting rather than making your own babies:

1) If our child turns out to be unathletic or geeky or stupid, we can just blame it on genetics!! On the other hand, if they turn out awesome, we'll just attribute it to our awesome parenting skills!
2) No stretch marks!!
3) Whenever Ping Pong is being bad, we'll threaten to send her back to China where she'll have to go to a boarding school from 7:00am-6:00pm everyday
4) If Aloo is ever bad, I’ll just tell her all the stories about female baby infanticide, arranged marriages, and wife-abuse in India!!!
5) If Ping Pong complains about my vegetarian cooking, I'll just tell her that she can go back to China and eat chicken feet, dog meat and jellied-fish eyes
6) In China, a child MUST financially support their parents after they turn 20 years old. If they don't, the parents have the legal right to file a lawsuit against their kid. We're going to tell Ping Pong that she better respect her culture!!!!!!

Update: Brandon decided that he doesn't want a Chinese baby. Chinese girls are just too unattractive and it'll lessen her chances of marrying a rich, old dude and becoming a trophy wife. So now he wants a Filipino baby. Good choice: I totally agree

Bus driving scum

So Brandon and I use public transportation for everywhere that we go in our city. A bus ride costs 1 rmb (14 cents) where as taxis might cost 14 rmb ($2.00) to get across town – so f that!!!
I pretty much consider Chinese bus drivers to be my worst enemy. I hate them sooooo, so much!! Why?

1)They talk (which means yell) on their cell phones or text message while smoking a cigarette when they’re driving. So, their driving is beyond erratic – even for china.

2) Break times. FUCKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Drivers just pull over any time they want! Sometimes they pull over to just buy a pack of cigarettes and other times they pull over to order a meal from a restaurant. AND THE PEOPLE IN THE BUSS JUST HAVE TO WAIT FOR THEM!!! What’s worse, bus drivers are allowed to take a two hour lunch break (all Chinese people take two hour lunch breaks, btw) ANYTIME between 11:00am and 2:30pm. SOOO, that means that at some point, the driver may just pull over and stop FOR TWO FUCKING HOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GOD DAMN IT!!!!! WTF?!?! ……deep breath…… Brandon and I learned the hard way that we can’t ride the bus between those hours.

3) Sometimes they bring their own radios on the bus and turn on Chinese music or talk radio SUPER LOUD – you have no idea the torture this causes

4) Portland Trimet drivers stop at every stop that they see people – Chinese drivers stop at every stop that they feel like stopping at. In order to get a bus to stop, you have to wave your arms in the air – they don’t just automatically stop. Half the time, even if there are 12 people at the stop wildly waving their arms in the air, the driver just won’t stop. WHY??????????????????????????

Philippines Highlights!!!!


This trip was awesome!!!!!! Who knew that the Phillipines were so cool?!

So, the people: we decided that Filipinos look like brown white people. They look slightly Mexican and maybe just a little Asian (we're so used to Chinese people that it's hard to tell if they looked slanty or not – hahaa!) but they definitely dress, eat and talk like Americans.

Most importantly, the food in the philipines was AMAZING!!! We've been stuck in China where there's literally nothing but Chinese food, McDonald's and Chinese food for a hundred mile radius from our apartment so when we got to the philipines and saw Mexican food, Italian food, American food and Indian food – we freaked out. Nelly and Brandon cried a little when they saw a Wendy's.

Here are some of the craziest things from our trip:

1) We had to fly out of Hong Kong to get to Manila. At the boarder between China and Hong Kong, we had arranged for a company to pick us up and take us through the boarder in a car and drive us straight to the airport. To our surprise, the car was on time . Nelly, Josh and I jumped in the car but a little, ancient chinese bitch literally pushed brandon and cut in front of him. We told her to get out and the driver told her to get out but she wouldn’t. Since having that old bitch in the car made it so that there wasn't an available seatbelt for Brandon, the driver said that Brandon couldn't come with us (in china, no one wear seatbelts but in Hong Kong there’s a different government thus different laws so seatbelts are required. So, we all had to get out. We were told that another car would get us in a minute. We waited for 1 ½ hours. For 1 ½ hours the words “old ” “Chink” and “Cunt” were used well over 900 times. Then, of course, there was a HUGE delay at the border. We were 2 ½ hours behind schedule and I was 100% sure that we were going to miss our flight. We knew that if we missed this flight, our specific airline wouldn’t have another Manila flight until the next night which would mean that we'd miss our flight to Cebu – so we'd have to cancel everything. When our car pulled up to the airport, it was ten minutes before our scheduled take-off time. We ran, and ran and ran. SOMEHOW there was no lines at the security check and SOMEHOW the plane was a little delayed and we ended up making it just in time. GOD!

2) We swam with glowing plankton!!!!!!! We were walking in the water at night on Boracay's White Beach and we kept seeing little, glowing, green and blue flashes in the water. We waded out into the deeper water and we saw thousands of them!!!! We stayed for three hours! It was magical and beautiful – totally like something from Avatar!!!!!!!

3) We spent four hours on a boat going from island to island and stopping for snorkeling at the best reefs (I saw angel fish and Nemo fish!!!!!!!!). It was fantastic!! But then, that night, it turned out that Josh, Nelly and Brandon had gotten terrible, crazy-red sunburns! And me: I got an awesome TAN!! JEW POWER!!!!!

4) So, I didn't get a sunburn but two days later I got something waaaaaay worse. My back was itching like crazy but I didn’t think anything of it until nelly saw my back and freaked out. I had this DISGUSTING, SICK, GROSS rash thing on my back. A 6”x6” spot on my back was covered in gazillions of red and white and NASTY bumps. YEAH! It was insanely itchy and painful. I begged Brandon to just get a knife and cut my back off. It was awful. AWFULLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I know when I got it too. At one of the hostels we stayed at, we all had separate beds and we were sure that our sheets were dirty. I guess I just got lucky with the diseased ones. Brandon thought that I should just consider myself lucky that those bumps didn't happen on my chest – he said he would have left me for sure. Anyway, it has been almost a month and the rash is almost gone. I don't know what it was and it's not like I can go to a Chinese doctor about it. They'd probably tell me that it was caused by eating too many cucumbers and not enough turtle feet.

5) We saw the Chocolate Hills which are one of the seven wonders of the world! It was so awesome – there are over 1,000 of these perfectly shaped hills – you just have to see it!

6) Brandon got his tattoo finished!!! I think it's the coolest thing in the world that he got his tattoo in Boracay, on the most beautiful beach in the world!! Finishing the tattoo took 5 ½ hours! The first half of his tattoo was done in Phuket on Patong Beach and took 4 hours.

7) One of our hostels had a killer spider in it! It was enormous – like massive – like almost as big as a tarantula!!! Josh, Nelly and I were so scared!!! We just stood on one of the beds while Brandon went after it for us. It took an hour but Brandon finally beat it to death with a broken toilet seat lid that we found. I'm still having nightmares.

May 22, 2010

Quest for the holy grail: a hot Chinese man


For the past nine months of living in China, Nelly (she's from AMURICA too) and I have been on a quest to find attractive Chinese guys. All the men are beyond repulsive here but we're sure that in a country of over one billion people, there'd have to be a few, right?!

So, we eventually found one: he was the dad of one of our kindergarten students. He was probably 6’2” and 200lbs. He was bald (which we usually aren't into but being bald meant that he didn't have a RETARDED Chinese haircut) and totally muscley!!! AND, his teeth (although needing braces) we're white and not brown/black/missing and he had short fingernails!!! We freaked out!!!!!!!!!! We gathered all of our Chinese TAs together so that they could check him out too and guess what – they all thought he was super “unattractive”!!!!!!!!! They said he looked like a big, ugly ogre!!! WTF is wrong with Chinese girls!?!?!!!!!!!! I guess they were right too because we later saw his wife and she had brown skin (which means UGLYYYYY in China).

Ok, so other than that ONE guy (who we never saw again), I've never found another hot Chinese guy. YEAH! Once, Nelly and I found a magazine advertisement with a HOT asian guy so we tore it out and took it to the TAs. It turned out that he was a Taiwanese celebrity and he's half white.

And I know what you're thinking... “But Mariel, in America, I see hot Asian guys every once in a while!” Ok, yes, me too. But those Asians are totally "western": they don't have dogshit haircuts, they brush their teeth and get braces, they don't have three-inch long fingernails, they don't wear shiny/bedazzled clothing and they weigh more than 120 pounds. Oh, and they’re probably Korean – not Chinese. Haaha!!

I live in Alabama.

I've been saying a lot (A LOT) of bad things about Chiina in this blog. But to be fair, I need to point out that I've never been to Beijing or Shanghai – maybe people are less retarded there! Everyone keeps telling me that Foshan (the city I'm living in) is the Alabama of Chiina. It's where people are the most closed-mined and conservative in Chinaa. However, I've spent about 15 weekends in Guangzhou (the third biggest city in Chinaa) and from what I've seen, people are just about as stupid there as in Foshan.

Oh Foshan, how I hate thee! Foshan is where SARS originated. And, apparently (I haven't found anything on the internet about this) the Bird Flu ALSO started here too. F'ing crazy, right? But makes perfect sense to me.... no one (NO ONE) ever washes their hands here – ever. I’m serious; some people literally go through their entire lives without washing their hands. And I'm not exaggerating!!! Before I leave here I'm going to record my Chinese friends explaining how soap is bad for the skin on your hands so that everyone will believe me! I have to carry soap with me where ever I go because there is never any in bathrooms (including in schools or restaurants).

And then there's the sneezing and spitting. People don't cover their mouths when they sneeze or cough. That would be unheard of here and they have no idea about the spreading germs thing. "What are germs?" And since the pollution is so awful AND because every man in this country smokes (and exposes his family to second hand smoke), EVERYONE is always coughing and sneezing on each other. It's disgusting!! Also, everyone is always spitting. Chinese people believe that excess saliva contains toxins and needs to be expelled from the body continually. So, people are always spitting. People spit on the floor in grocery stores, restaurants and in my f'ing classroom!!

I love Brandon!!

For my birthday, Brandon grew out his hair for three months and didn’t shave his face for 3 ½ weeks. He looked so great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Plus, he was super miserable having long hair, which I also enjoyed! :) After my birthday he was going to get his whole head and face shaved but I got him to agree to just get a normal haircut – I just have to do all of his laundry for the next 70 days. Whatever – I do most of his laundry anyway. Plus, he let me cut his hair into a mullet before we went to see the “barber” (man with a chair and a pair of scissors that charges 7rmb -$1. for a terrible haircut). I think that Brandon liked the mullet more than what the “barber” gave him – the guy shaved off his sideburns!

My birthday

This was my second birthday away from home. Last year was in Bangkok and this year: China. Since China makes me want to kill myself, I thought this was going to be the worst birthday EVER but it ended up being really, really nice!!!


Brandon surprised me by decorating our apartment and getting me every single ingredient that you need to make burritos!!! He actually found tortillas and cheese in HK!!!!!! It was the best meal I've ever had!

And the boxes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Maria and my mom (the coolest people in the whooooooooole world) spent a gazillion dollars sending me giant boxes of American stuff!!!! I love them sooooo, soooo much! Unless you've lived in this hell country, there's no way you can really understand how much it means to get a pile of American magazines, luna bars, Indian food mixes and real chocolate. It was better than chirstmas morning!!! I've already read every single word in all of the magazines but I'm rationing all of the food so that it’ll last until July when I leave!! It's going to make surviving so much easier!

Thank you gay nigga!!

There's a SUPER GAY Filipino guy that works at our school named Allen. When I first met him, I tried really hard to make him my new, gay bff because 1) I've always wanted a gay bff and 2) it seemed like he had no friends except for our psycho boss Tina. All the foreigners and Chinese staff hated him! But then, I learned why. He's a tattler!!! Tina (our super evil, bitchie boss) has Allen in her pocket. If we said anything negative about the school, our jobs or China in the vicinity of Allen, we knew that Tina was going to immediately find out about it. And he lied constantly to us! When we first started at our school, Tina and Allen had us doing retarded amounts of extra work because they said that it was part of our jobs. Then, we found out from the other foreign teachers that we were being lied to. I could go on ALL DAY about how badly he f'ed us over.


Ok, so Allen is Filipino, right? Every single Filipino I've ever met (I've been to the Philippines) speaks perfect, American-sounding English: but not allen. I have 12 year old Chinese kids in my classes with significantly better English than him- which definitely isn’t saying much. He’s nearly impossible to understand and his lisp and flamboyantly gay voice doesn’t help his cause. Anyway, he has a lot of weird phrases like “What time it is?” and “already I told her” but our favorite one is: “Thank you for that” – he says it ALL THE TIME and in a super gay way. Like hundreds of times a day! So of course, we all started saying it constantly. One time during a school promotion, Brandon and josh had the microphone and they said “thank you for that” at the end of every sentence right in front of allen (who didn’t notice). Nelly and I almost peed our pants.

So, in Chinese class one time, Josh asked how to say “thank you for that” in Chinese. Melon (our teacher and best friend) wrote on the board: “thank you” = “xia xia” “for” = “gay” and “that” = “nigga.” So, “XiaXia gay nigga.” We had to stop class because none of us could stop laughing.

So, for the past 8 months, we have been saying “gay nigga” constantly. We say “sorry gay nigga,” “I love you gay nigga,” “I'm hungry gay nigga.” We think we’re so funny!

White Power!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Can you imagine dropping acid in China? You'd be like: whoaaaa, why is everyone so small? And Asian?” –our American friend: Jon

There are four million Chinese people in our city and 10 foreigners. So, every time we see a white person (or anyone that's not Chinese) – we freak out!!!! And so do Chinese people!

Being white is awesome in China. We're basically rock stars. People are always yelling “HALLO!” at us and taking pictures of us on their camera phones. Chinese people just think that whities are super cool (as they should). So naturally businesses love to use white people for their advertisements. Almost every restaurant, clothing store, training school (ours included) or shopping mall uses photos of white people eating their food/trying on their clothes/attending their classes as advertising. The photos are pretty much always fake or stolen. For example, there's a Spa next to our school that has a billboard with Clive Owen on it. And I once saw Brad Pitt's photo advertising a Chinese restaurant (Duh – don't they know that Brad is a vegetarian?!). AND, we saw an ad for hookers that used photos of Brittany Spears! Even Josh's photo is being used to advertise an Optometry Clinic!

This kind of stuff happens all the time – like one time, a Chinese lady asked Brandon/Josh/Nelly/me if we'd come to a “ceramics fair” to pretend that we were customers. She said that she'd pay us 300 rmb each ($43.) to pretend that we were interested in buying sinks, showers and toilets to import to America. Of course we agreed. By white people being there, it apparently made other customers more interested in purchasing the products. It was so awesome because while we were touring these stores, we got free food and as much wine as we wanted!!! YEAH! White Pow!

If this was America, I would die from embarrassment

I’ve been avoiding going dancing in Chinaa for the past nine months. I hate Chinese music (it ALL sounds like Brittany Spear but probably 1379% worse), I hate it when Chinese girls drink LITERALLY one sip of beer and then declare: “OH MY GOD; I’M SO TOTALLY WASTED” and start stumbling around, I hate going pee in a squat toilet when I’m drunk (or any other time for that matter) and I hate Chinese men who ALL consistently smoke at a rate of 8 cigarettes per hour. I knew that a Chinese bar or club would be the extremes of all these things so I did NOT want to go. But then, I got peer pressured into it and yes, I was totally dead on. Oh, there was one added surprise that I should have expected: dancing Chinese people = sweaty Chinese people = worst BO smell in the world!!!!!

The smoke is crazy. In the club, it looked like there were 10 fog machines on top notch – but there wasn’t. Just Chinese people smoking. Remember how I explained that 100% of Chinese men smoke and 0% of Chinese girls - well I learned that that’s not true. Prostitutes are all smokers and lots of the girls (almost half I’d guess) that go to clubs are smokers. So basically, after spending a few hours in this place, I’m pretty sure I have lung cancer.

Ok, ok, so a group of six of us went out last night to this bar called “V-Mix” which is supposed to be the COOLEST place in Shunde. We got a table and ordered a bucket of beers because that’s what everyone does. After drinking for a little while Nelly and I went to find a bathroom. Amazingly, we didn’t get lost on the way there but we definitely did on the way back. It turned out that this place has like a hundered different rooms. When we walked into the wrong one, we were immediately asked to get on a stage by a couple of Chinese guys. We said NO but they literally dragged us up to the stage which is in the middle of the bar in the center of the room (and had POLES!!!!). We kept saying no: “Wo bu yao, wo bu yao, wo bu yao!!” but Nelly got pushed up and then two 115lb Chinese guys SOMEHOW picked me up and put me on the stage. Awesome. Everyone started screaming (because we’re white) and I guess that made our slut magic kick in so we started dancing – like total hookers!!!!!!!!!! …but just for a minute. As soon as we could, we climbed down and RAN out of the room SCREAMING back to the boys.

It turned out that a couple managers of the club followed us back. They talked to Angela -our one Chinese friend that went with us - and told her that if Nelly and I went back to dance, they’d give us free drinks and food (Chinese people order tons of food when they go to clubs) for the rest of the night. Let me think - OK!! So we picked up our stuff and moved to the other room.

So yeah, Nelly and I danced on stage again. It was extra bad because I was wearing a super low-cut dress which is something that Chinese girls NEVER do. They all wear REALLY short skirts where you can literally see their butt cheeks – but they’d never-ever consider wearing anything that’d show off their cleavage (or lack thereof). So yeah, back to dancing: this is something that I’d NEVER do in America (again that is-- Oh my god Maria: I still DIE when I think about that night at Mike’s!!!!!!!!!!!). But we’re in China with Chinese people – so who cares, right?!?!! HA! And we got all the free drinks and stuff that we wanted!


Some other crazy things about the bar:

1) The bouncers were tiny. They weren’t even slightly bigger than the average Chinese guy. So, that means like 120ish lbs.

2) On the dance floor, everyone faces the same direction. It looks like they’re going to start line dancing or something. So, the room is set up with the dance floor at one end and then tons of tables at the other. Everyone dances in lines and all facing the tables. WEIRD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

3) The DJ played “la cucaracha.” Twice.

4) We saw a Chinese guy who was clearly trashed dancing on the dance floor (facing the tables!!) who would violently dance/jump/thrash his arms around and then just sit down on the ground or lay his head down against one of the speakers or handrails. Then, he’d jump up and do it again. He was like crazed!!!!!!!!! At one point, he climbed up on some speakers and immediately fell off and hit his head on the way down. It was awful (and hilarious)! When he was passed out cold for two minutes, about 12 bouncers came over and stood in a circle around him. As soon as he came to and got up, they just left and he went back to dancing/flinging his body around the dance floor. THEY DIDN’T KICK HIM OUT!!!!! It was awesome.

5) Ummmm, so Chinese people use squat toilets which means that Chinese bathrooms are always jaw-droopingly disgusting. But this one was beyond anything I’ve ever seen. My gag-reflex could barely handle it. I can still feel the stinging in the back of my throat from the smell. It’s haunting. The floors were flooded with pee and there was smashed up poop on the floors of all of the stalls. FML. The pee-splashes had eroded the bottoms of all the stall doors which were almost rusted through. As usual, I screamed “For god’s sake; you’re all uncivilized savages!” in my best British accent. COME ON, how can a country that uses these “toilets” be a world superpower?!?!!?! And was there soap or toilet paper in the bathroom? OF COURSE NOT! Pigs. Luckily, I’ve learned to carry that with me at ALL times – in my bra. God I hate chinaa.

6) I also want to point out another big cultural difference. Unlike AMURICA(!!!!) most people in China think that dance clubs and bars are really, really, really, really, really bad places. A “good girl” in china will never set foot into a club – ever. Our friends have explained to us a zillion times that the girls in bars and clubs are BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD girls. But then again, their definition of “Bad girl” means: 1)being an unmarried non-virgin 2)being a smoker 3)drinking beer

Apr 16, 2010

They're ALL pukers

There isn't toilet paper or soap in a single public restroom in this country. Restaurants charge you 1-3 yuan if you request a napkin. Grocery stores charge 1 yuan for a plastic bag for your groceries. Nothing is free in China except for one thing: puke bags. And they're everywhere. We've taken the most ghetto, gross buses in the world but even they have 100s of free puke bags in three different places on the bus. Why? It's 100% necessary; Chinese people are pukers – big-time.

I don't know what it is; they're just always throwing up. Of course the bus and bus stops are the worst places but it doesn't stop there. There's rice puke-piles (as we now call them) outside of grocery stores (and in grocery stores), everywhere alongside roads and in most public restrooms.

Why?! I don't think it's the filthy, unsanitary food because I'm eating the same thing and it's not making me puke (anymore). Everyone has Hep here – does that cause puking?? We asked an English speaking chinese guy about all the throwing up and he told us that Chinese women (not men) throw up commonly because they have thinner skin than men which causes the nerve that runs from the top to bottom of their forehead to become misaligned easily and this misalignment causes upset stomachs and throwing up. And, he said western women also have thicker skin than Chinese women so that's why white girls aren’t always throwing up. Yeah. The craziest thing about this is that Brandon got through the whole explanation without busting up laughing.

Chinese people and elevators

Americans stereotype Asians as super brainy math nerds, right? Maybe it’s Koreans or the Japanese that are super smart but it’s certainly not the Chinese. I’ve never met such retarded people in my entire life. My favorite stupid thing that all Chinese people do is misuse elevators.

Ok so you’re on the 8th floor of a building and you want to go down to the first floor so you’d press the down button, right? But what if you can see that the elevator is currently on the 3rd floor? You’d OBVIOUSLY still press the down button. …but not if you’re Chinese. Your average Chinese people seems to ALL think that you need to press the UP button to get the elevator to “come up to you.” I’m not kidding. So here’s what CONSTANTLY happens: I’ll get into our apartment building’s elevator on the 1st floor (I live on the 24th floor) and on my way up, the elevator will stop a million freaking times on every floor that a retarded Chinese person pressed the up button even though they clearly wanted to go down. But since they could see that the elevator was below them, they pressed the up button. So, the elevator will stop on the 3rd floor and a Chinese person will get in (while simultaneously holding a crying baby, some beer and a lit cigarette) and after a minute they’ll realize that the elevator is going up. So, of course, they’ll press buttons until the elevator stops and lets them off on the 6th floor or whatever. Then, on the 15th floor the same thing will F’ING happen with another retarded person. Basically, it’s faster to take the stairs to the 24th floor rather than deal with all the retardedness.

The other thing that really bothers us – Chinese people ALWAYS shove their way into an elevator before they’ll let you get out. It drives us crazy. Oh and then there’s the smoking. Soooo many times I’ve had to get out of an elevator too early just to escape the smoke. How is it ok to puff away in a 10’x5’x5’metal box?!

She aint nothing but a gold digger

“He’s very ugly but he’s rich. –Margaret (one of our TAs)

Chinese girls are really, really open about marrying for money rather than love. In fact, it seems like they think it’s something to be proud of. I’ve tried explaining a few times about how it’s embarrassing to be a gold digger in America and how 20 year old girls pretend to be in love with their 60 year old boyfriends rather than admit that they’re in it for the presents and money.

Sarah: “why would they lie? There’s nothing wrong with wanting a nice house and expensive clothes.”
Mariel: “because it’s embarrassing! Everyone would think that you’re greedy and a bad person!
Sarah: “WHY?!”

Stair flowers!

Our old gym in Nanhai got shut down!!!! Either the building was condemned (I don’t know if they do that in China but in America, that building would DEFINITELY be knocked down) or it was too shitty for even Chinese people and it was shut down. This gym was PATHETIC and super dirty. It had no cardio equipment other than some half busted tredmills and all the free weights were covered in this black tar stuff that took forever to scrub off your hands. PLUS, it was only open from 9am-11am and 2pm-8pm and it was closed on one or two random days every week. #%!*$@& Chinese businesses!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHH!!!!!!

So the stairs – this is how I mainly exercise now. Both places we’ve lived in have been in 24-story buildings so every morning (ok, almost every morning) I go up the stairs four times. I know, I’m awesome!! The only cool thing about doing this is that I always find flowers!!! Ok, so Chinese almost all live in 20+ story apartment buildings and they dump all of their trash in the stairwells (yeah, I know) and for whatever reason, Chinese girls get a lot ( A LOT) of flowers which they seem to throw away while they’re still fresh. So, literally every day I see bouquets of flowers in the stairwells and if the flowers are pretty, I collect them. Most bouquets in china are covered with glitter (same as their clothes, makeup, and cell phones) so I don’t take those flowers but sometimes I find un-glittered roses, lilies, gerber daisies and orchids. It’s awesome!!! Brandon said that on my birthday he’s going to climb the stairs before I do so that he can get me flowers – so romantic!

Saying inappropriate things in public - my fav thing about China

Yeah, all Chinese people have had 12 years (or more) of English classes from the public schools but seriously NO ONE speaks English. Other than our school’s employees, we pretty much NEVER meet anyone that can muster anything other than “hallo” “haw ah youuuu?” “you ahhh beautiful” and MAYBE numbers 1-5. The one great thing about this is that we get to have incredibly inappropriate conversations in public places. You wouldn’t believe how fun it is for Nelly and me to loudly discuss sex stories while two old ladies are sitting between us on a packed bus. The only real problem about doing this is that we’ve gotten waaaaaaaay to used to doing it and I’m sure when we’re back in America we’re going to slip up A LOT. Like in Hong Kong – EVERYONE speaks excellent English there (because it’s not really china) and there are loads of foreigners but we still always forget and end up embarrassing ourselves.

Nelly: Ryan is so hot!! I would TOTALLY swallow his cum!
Josh: we’ve been together for two years and you won’t even give me head!
Nelly: I TOLD YOU! Shave your ball afro and I will!
Mariel: He still doesn’t?! you’re such an inconsiderate jerk – she shaves everything for you!
Nelly: You should see his bush – it’s huge! Like enormous. I sweartogod his ball hair is four inches long!
Mariel: Oh. My. God. I didn’t know that ball hair could get that long!! GROSS!
At this very moment I looked over and two white guys were standing three feet away and laughing at us.
_____________

On a bus:
Josh: Condoms make your dick so gross! Have you ever given a guy head after he blew a load in a condom?
Mariel: No!
Nelly: have you?!
Josh: NO! Well, I don’t know if it smells as bad as it tastes but….
Mariel, Brandon, Nelly: HAAAAAHHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA

Riding in buses with Chinese People

Ummmmm, riding in a Chinese bus is worse than what I imagine waterboarding must be like.

Most Chinese people don’t bathe everyday and NONE of them wash their clothes often enough or wear deodorant which makes the buss’s air almost unbearable on a hot day. It smells like urine, BO and rotting balls.

Chinese busses have 10 single seats in the front and 12 double seats in the back. Even though there are 12 seats in the back, you pretty much NEVER see more than 6 people sitting. Even on super crowded busses where there are 25 people crammed in and standing, NO ONE that has one of those double seats will let someone sit next to them. They always put their bag or jacket on the seat next to them and refuse to move it. WHY?!?!?!

Have I mentioned how Chinese people speak (I mean yell) on their phones? Ok, so picture ten Chinese people (definitely including the driver) screaming into their phones at all times on a bus.

Almost all Chinese busses have radios. The bus wont have shocks or well functioning breaks, but it’ll have a radio AND loud ass speakers. Do you know what Chinese pop music sounds like? Like I said: waterboarding.

We’ve stopped offering our seats to old people and pregnant women. No one else does it and the person never accepts it anyway.

Babies. Peeing on the floor. On the bus. Everywhere.
And then there’s the constant Puking. But that’s everywhere in China.

Bus drivers drive me crazy. They’re always on their phone and driving super erratically (probably part of the reason why there’s always so many pukers on the bus). They also pull over to take breaks or buy lottery tickets and cigarettes whenever they feel like it too.

There is one thing about Chinese busses that I LOVE. When someone gets out of their seat to leave, a person that wants to sit down will stand near the empty seat and every ten seconds or so they will touch the seat with their hand (GROSS) and after a minute or so, they’ll sit down. I asked my friends why Chinese people always do this and it’s because they think that if they sit in a warm seat, they’ll get a disease so they have to wait until the seat has cooled off. Yeah, really. Seriously 100% of people believe this. The great thing about this is that it’s really easy to steal open seats. Nelly and I love to shove past the waiting crazy person (shoving is totally ok in china) and just sit down. No one has ever said anything to us because they think we didn’t know that they were just waiting for the diseases to disappear AND they don’t speak any English anyway. It’s awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Feb 17, 2010

Hilarious Chinese movie experience

We went to see Avatar (shown with Chinese subtitles) but I don’t remember anything about the movie. All I can remember is the noise.

“HWAY?! HWAY?! HWAAAAAAYYYYY?!!?!?!” I think that EVERY person in the theater must have gotten at least 319 phone calls (which they answered) during the movie. And then the babies – dear god. I’m wondering if you get a discount if you bring a crying baby with you into a theater because EVERYONE HAD ONE. Seriously, like everyone. I’ll be sure to bring one next time. “Hey ChingChangTongPing, can I borrow your screaming baby for a couple hours? I’m going to see a movie!”



Of couse all the men smelled like BO terribly and were chain smoking in the theater too.. Awesome. And each person apparently needed 10 bathroom visits. There was actually a huge restroom in the back of the movie theater!!! Which also meant that every time someone opened the door, the bright light messed up the movie.



So while taking care of their babies, reading their Chinese subtitles outloud, smoking, taking bathroom breaks and talking on their phone, people were SOMEHOW paying attention to the movie. I know this because of how the theater erupted with laughter several times during the movie. What were those parts? AVATAR SPOILER ALERT!! Lets see… when the bombs were going off and the tree was falling on people, when Sigourney Weaver died and during the kissing scene. What the f?!?!

Brittany would be a model parent in China

They only get to have one kid so you’d think they’d take care of it, right?

I’ve seen mothers feeding peanuts to their babies SO MANY TIMES. Never mind the terrible choking hazard, aren’t you supposed to wait until your child is a few years old to expose them to peanuts because of the deadly allergy possibility?!

Parents let their babies crawl around on the sidewalks in china. We constantly see them eating gross food off the street right in front of their parents. THIS IS WHY THEY ALL HAVE STEAL STOMACHS (and Hep A). If I was to eat something off a street in china, I’d die. No question.

We once saw a baby toddling onto an escalator. If Brandon hadn’t grabbed it, it definitely would have lost its little fingers.

When you’re holding a baby, you support their neck and hold their head, right? They’ve never heard of such a concept here and EVERYDAY we see babies with their little heads snapped all the way back or flopping from side to side and back and forth on a bus. It’s excruciating to watch.

Even super rich people don’t put their kids in car seats. They hold them while driving (while they smoke with the windows up).

Our students wear the exact same clothes to school every day. According to our TAs, our students are all rich kids whose parents can afford our school’s high prices. So why can’t they afford more than one ratty outfit for their kids?

I’d say that at least 1/5 of our students are dropped off for their classes at our school more than an hour early and are picked up at least an hour late. These poor kids live at a boarding school five days a week so they only get to be with their parents two f’ing days a week. So why the hell would you leave your kid at their Chinese lessons for longer than necessary?!?!?! Some of the kids are dripped off like three hours early AND picked up late!

List of crazy stuff our Chinese friends say:

Melon (our favorite Chinese friend) was trying to say “SERVES HER RIGHT” but instead, she she announced “SERVICE HER RIGHT!!”

According to our Chinese friends, having sex makes a girl’s nipples turn brown. Apparently all virgins have pink nipples and “all married girls have brown nipples.” I guess this explains why there are nipple bleaching creams sold everywhere.

“what do you take me for? A foolish?” “Why do you treat me like a foolish?” –Melon

“BJ, BJ, BJ!!!!” Melon, our tiny, sweet, innocent friend started yelling “BJ!!!” over and over again on crowded street. We stopped from laughing long enough to ask her what she ment and she said that “BJ” meant “Bad Josh” and she was saying it because Josh was being mean to her.

Brandon, Nelly, Josh and I were stuffed into the back of a taxi and were FREAKING OUT because our driver had been driving THE WRONG WAY down a one-way highway for about six miles. The driver was swerving like crazy as we played chicken over and over again with semi trucks.

Melon: “Why you guys scared? He’s a good driver!”

Josh: “Yeah, he’s honking his horn and flashing his brights so there’s nothing to worry about”

Melon: “That’s right!”



Nelly and I were trying to think of pretty English names for my TA’s baby niece.. We came up with Emily, Cloe, Sarah, and Cassie when Margaret (our most retarded Chinese TA) butts in and says “Those aren’t real English names!!” Uhhhhhh, Nelly maybe a Russian and I may be a jew but I’m pretty sure we know what engish names are. I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP….

Margaret: “How about TeePee?”

Mariel/Nelly: “WHAT?!”

Margaret: Like the letters: T P. It’s very beautiful girl name

Mariel/Nelly: TP, as in Toilet paper?! That’s what we call Toilet paper!!!

Margaret: “No it’s not!! Ok, well how about Doodoo or Kiki?

Mariel/Nelly: Oh my god!

Margaret: Or GoGo

Mariel: A GoGo is a place where you go to see naked dancers

Margaret: No it’s not!!! Ok, how about Apple? I think that’s the most beautiful English name

Mariel: That’s the name of a fruit, not a person’s name!! Would it be ok if my Chinese name was ShungGeow (Chinese for Banana)??

Margaret: That would be ridiculous. Seriously, Apple is a really good English name!!!!!!!!!!!!

Josh is a Jerk II

“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” – Mark Twain


As a result of my August post about Josh, I’m immensely proud to say that I’ve created quite a large “I hate Josh fanclub.” Unfortunately, my original intention for writing that entry still hasn’t been fulfilled: his parent’s haven’t read it yet!!! ….But I guess I don’t blame them for not loving him enough to read about how he’s doing.

EVEN if his parents don’t read this, I thought I’d catch up on just a few of his latest stories:


At school Josh told a bunch of kids that my name is rosie o’donnel and then had them call me that.

I’ve been trying to think of a fake name that I can use (for private tutoring which is against my contract) and I chose Lily. I had to choose a last name and Josh was nice enough to suggest Lily FattyMcFaterson.

Josh still nickel & dimes Nelly NON STOP! He even has started charging her for orgasms. Just the other day nelly had to buy josh breadsticks and ice cream to pay him back for two and a half.

Nelly bought some Chinese skinny-jeans that are nearly as thin as nylons and definitely as tight...

Josh: “You look like a hooker in those pants! They make your butt look like a planet or at least a large moon.” (Nelly is like a size 1)

Teresa: Are you talking about Nelly or Mariel?
Josh: HAAAAAA!!!!!!!! If I was talking about Mariel I definitely wouldn’t say large moon! I would say THE SUN!

Josh: “this is the widest door frame I’ve ever seen!! Mariel, even your butt can squeeze though!”

I learned that “Xiao JewJew” (which translates to “little piggy”) is a pet name that you’d call a Chinese girlfriend. When I heard that, I said that I wanted my new Chinese name to be Xiao JewJew. Of course, Josh said: “uhhhhh, you mean Da JewJew?” which means “big piggy.”

A few days later, five of us were in the back of a taxi and josh said: “It wouldn’t be so cramped if Da JewJew wasn’t taking up half of the seat.

Josh: “If Lisa had a big set of tits on her, I’d have sex with her. And if she said no, I’d rape her. Yeah – put that in your blog. I’d rape her.”

Home again, home again

I went home to America for two weeks: the fastest two weeks of my life. I was totally in a daze as I went through American culture shock, visited my wonderful friends, ate LOADS of awesome food and soaked up weiner dog kisses. I’m still nostalgic about the whole trip!

So, when I went home I had only been out of the country for eight months but it really felt more like three years. Everything was freaking me out: the giant herds of WHITE people, blue sky, girls smoking cigarettes, blonde hair, smooth roads, sane driving, wheelchair access ramps, drinkable tap water, refrigerators that are bigger than 2 ½’ x 2’ – I haven’t seen any of these things FOR SO LONG! And more noticeable than anything… EVERYTHING IN AMERICA IS SO CLEAN! I could go on and on and on. It’s shocking how literally every aspect of life is different in America vs China.

Things that I now FULLY APPRECIATE about America:

American men are staggeringly gorgeous. They’re three times the size of a Chinese guy, they brush their teeth, they don’t all smoke, they clip their nails, they wear deodorant, they know how to drive and they don’t have mullets

You can trust the things you buy to actually be what’s advertised. If you buy a six pack of Corona in China, it’s not going to be corona. It’ll be some nasty, Chinese rubbing alcohol in yellow water. The packaging will be real (they “recycled” the bottles) but the beer wont be real. Fakes are even sold at the the big grocery chains like Walmart here.

America has Mexican food, Italian food, Chinese food, Indian Food, American food, we have everything. In China, there’s Chinese food and then there’s Chinese food and then there’s McDonalds. That’s all you get.

No smoking in restaurants/elevators/bars

Most Americans know better than to blindly and unconditionally love and admire the government

And uhhhhhhhhhh…. HUMAN RIGHTS

Seriously, I love America so much now!! When I come back to America, I think I’m going to start driving a massive F350 covered with “GOD BLESS AMERICA” and “These colors don’t run” stickers. Maybe I’ll buy a gun and Sarah Palin’s book too!