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!

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.

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!!

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.

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.

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!!