It’s been forever. I know. I’m lazy. Oh well. Anyway, I’m going to try to get back into blogging. I may start using tumblr instead…thoughts? I don’t really know anything about it but it seems less daunting to post something on there than on here. I always feel like I need to have a legitimate story/post on here to write something and then end up not posting because it take too much effort.
That being said, tumblr won’t open on my computer right now so I’ll post here.
Brief life update.
I’m no longer in Hunan. I’m in Guangdong. Hunan will forever be my favorite place, but Guangdong is so much more livable. It has rained for 20 days straight in Changsha. So yeah, I’m glad to be down here even if it is raining here quite often also…at least it’s not freezing out.
I just traveled for nearly 2 months. Spent most of my time in Bali…. it was nice.. ha.
Now, I’m back to work and it’s difficult to get back into the swing of things. Probably better for my liver to have work and not be partying everyday anyway.
I’m at starbucks doing some work now. Or, well, I was doing work. Now, I’m going to head to the gym. Just wanted to post something to break the ice. K. Post later. Maybe after the gym..if something funny/awkward happens …seeing as it usually does at that place.
Much love.
Francis
-Oh, considering going back to my roots and going by my original name: Francis. I don’t like it, but I guess I was feeling a bit bored? Whatever.
- We arrived in LiJiang sometime in the mid-afternoon. Since it had been Craig’s favorite city, we were excited to have a look look. All I really knew about Lijiang beforehand was that it was some beautiful “Old City”…one of those world heritage sites or something (the only buildings were preserved and it was supposed to be beauuutiful). So, you can imagine our surprise when we were welcomed to the “old city” by a brand new Pizza Hut and KFC.
- Next, we wandered the streets noticing that everything seemed to be closed. And the things that weren’t closed…well, they all looked the same. The shops sold the same scarves, wood carvings, and horrible CD (a one track CD…I don’t know how I forget what the words were since they haunted me in my dreams for weeks). But seriously, whereas most cities have street signs and landmarks that you can use to navigate the roads, this city was a giant maze of old buildings with touristy souvenirs (oh and thousands and thousands of Chinese tourists….who, like the average Chinese citizen, seem to have a difficult time walking at a sufficient pace and well, in a straight line. Zigzag patterns of walking are highly encouraged.
- Seriously though, the city was really pretty..and clean. But it was night one that tragedy struck. Vinny made his typical trip to the hospital to buy some cold medicine (I bought some, also). But, having the stronger immune system, I was able to head out with Craig while Vinny sat in our hotel room and moped.
- Craig and I were to look for “The Stone Crow,” a bar that he really liked the first time he was in Lijiang. As we walked the city for what seemed like days, it became pretty obvious that we were never going to find it. Therefore, we stopped in some bar and looked at the menu. The drinks were way too expensive, and so we asked the waitress if she knew where “The Stone Crow” was. She responded saying something about it being closed, but we couldn’t fully understand what she was explaining. Anyway, we left that bar and continued to look, figuring she was lying to us.
- While searching for the bar, we inevitably got lost and had to stop in some hostel to ask for directions back. It was there that a giant bear-dog named Yak jumped up on me and tried to eat my face. Luckily, I had Onomatopoeia to protect me. Anyhow, we eventually made it back…as failures.
- Upon re-entering the room, we found an apologetic Vinny vomiting into a trashcan at his bedside. On top of his cold, he seemed to have caught a stomach virus. Unfortunate.
- During the night, I woke up to Craig coughing. Coughing then turned into a mad dash to the bathroom where he would become the second victim of the mad stomach virus. For the next 5 or so hours, I hid under my covers trying to hide from the germy atmosphere on the other side that could cause me to join the vomit crew.
- In the morning, I got up and rushed out of the room before I could catch their illness. Some Chinese man then tried to get me to ride his horse for the day or something. Then he thought I was going with some other woman and told me that it was “Terrible! Terrible! She used to be my wife” before storming away. I then decided to go to the Emerald Pool or something (some lake with one of the most iconic picture spots in all of southern China…or so some guide book said).
- At the “pool”: I was under the impression that I had to pay about 80 Yuan or something. But then I saw people walk through, and thought to myself, “perhaps, paying is optional.” I was on the phone so I meandered through the gate and waited for someone to apprehend me. No one came, and that is how I accidentally snuck in. So, I walked around for a while and then hiked up this mountain. It was here that some man in a red jacket began stalking me….or he just so happened to be walking the same pace as me and taking the exact same breaks as me for the entire duration of the upward hike. Once again, I was glad to heave my “weapon”…aka trophy. However, on the way back down he was able to out-stride him and reach the bottom without having to unleash the fury of Onomatopoeia.
- For the rest of the day, I ignored some little girl who was hitting the bench I was napping on as she yapped, “MISTER, MISTER, MISTER!” Sorry little girl, I was busy pretending my music was too loud to hear you.
- The next day, I decided to go to the Tiger Leaping Gorge on a day trip. Craig and Vinny were still recuperating so they stayed in. Here I met some other foreigners (a British guy and girl and a Chinese guy from Hunan who lived in England for the better part of his life). We were able to survive such obstacles as the bathroom debacle (you don’t want to know), the bawling Chinese chick who couldn’t handle the unbearable height despite the fact that falling down into the gorge would have taken a lot of effort, and the slowest hikers known to man. We did get some good pictures though, and the day ended as a success
- Night time: Went to eat with Craig and Vinny, then they went home and I went to Ns Kitchen, my favorite sandwich place in Lijiang. The boss suggested that maybe I could go to this bar he had a card for. And wouldn’t ya know: “Stone the Crows.” I could only assume this was “The Stone Crow” that Craig had been talking about so I called him. The boss told me that it had closed, but it was now in a new location.
- Well, what did we discover? It was closed, and the bar that Craig and I stopped in the first night was actually the exact location of where “Stone the Crows” had previously been. Crazy.
- After a few drinks at a restaurant, Craig went home and I went to Check out the clubs. At the first place, I felt a little awkward since I was sat down at a table by myself (well, I guess I had Onomatopoeia with me). However, people immediately invited me to different tables and a dance party started. The highlight was clearly when the oldest man living burst onto the scene and started break dancing. We soon formed the best dance team ever, but it was short-lived as I soon got sick of the European club music and left.
- I then decided to search out some American music, and I found it next door. Immediately, some people invited me to their table (again) and some girls started challenging me to chug offs. Then, when “Baby” came on, I hopped up onto the giant stage and requested a microphone. As the only foreigner in a dead club, they saw nothing to lose and forfeited a mic up to me. Within minutes, people from the club I had previously been in (which just so happened to be connected to the new club), started migrating over and a huge dance-party commenced on stage. Once again though, this was short-lived as Lijiang has a curfew and the music had to be turned off.
- I gave one last go at finding a fun spot, and went across the river-road. I walked into a club and the lights were on and the music was off. Nevertheless, it was still pretty packed. I was only there for a moment when some girl started waving to me. I walked up to their table, and she proclaimed that the girls at their table wanted to take my clothes off. I told her that the lights and lack of music kind of killed the vibe and that wouldn’t be possible. So, we went back to their hostel and sang karaoke in their common room. There were tons of Chinese people about my age and they were all raging. It was a strange sight, and I definitely was aware of the fact that I would not be able to make it back to my hotel. Somehow though, after a few hours of hanging out, I made it back to my hotel (after taking a taxi and instructing him to drive to KFC….the one landmark that I knew…and even that failed me as there was another KFC, also. Eventually, I made it though.)
- Anyway, the next day, I was exhausted and just hung around, went for a massage, and relaxed while Craig and Vinny did the daytrip to the Tiger Leaping Gorge.
- Finally, the day after that, we were off to the airport to fly down south to JingHong (southern Yunnan)
So, I’m going to make a petty attempt at updating about my travels. Since it would take forever to write about 3+ weeks, I’m just going to give updates on the cities we traveled to.
1 – Kunming
- We had escaped a big snow storm to arrive in Kunming. It was warm…and sunny.
- We bought shots of tequila for 3 Chinese guys who were playing pool at our hostel. The one guy reciprocated by buying us an entire bottle of gin and stood next to us until we finished it. It took about 10 minutes. Then he told the bartender to keep filling up our shot glasses. Never-ending gin shots. Yum. Vom.
- The first night, some American told us a completely fabricated story about two Russian men who tried to fight an entire bar and ended up getting bludgeoned by a meat cleaver. We went to to the clubs anyway and made friends with everyone, including the managers and performers.
- We walked down a street with hundreds of trophy shops. We bought one. A giant cup. We named him Onomatopoeia based on Craig’s mistake of calling something that was an oxymoron and onomatopoeia (I think..). We would continue to drink out of this trophy with champagne, beer, and hard liquor for the entirety of the trip…except not at the club, because he was considered a “weapon” and therefore we had to check him with the bags. Oh yeah, Onomatopoeia is a boy.
- Craig, Sam (some guy we met), and I all had our jackets “stolen” at the club. A manager helped me look for them. Craig gave up on looking and went home. I found Craigs. And I even found his stupid gloves. At least I had a jacket to wear home.
2 – Dali
- Note: this was our favorite city
- First night we had Yak steaks, mashed potatoes (aka french fries), and Lao lager.
- After Craig went home (thank god!), Vinny and I walked around for a little bit until we found a different bar. We found a real karaoke bar…not just a KTV (private rooms). This was a big bar with a huge stage where people could perform. At this point in the trip we had JB (the nickname of Onomatopoeia..it stands for jiang bei..big cup…trophy) on a strap that Vinny had so conveniently packed, and so we were able to travel with him easily. The moment we walked in, Mr. Water, the guy sent to greet us started going crazy. Actually, all Chinese people that saw JB would respond with a resounding “Wahhhhh Wahhhhh Wahhhhh” in excitement. Mr. Water then introduced us to the bar owner. Apparently, he owned all the bars on the street. After having a few beers (some that Mr. Water stole for us from his bosses table) and refusing to sing karaoke, we went home…but not until we had promised to return the next night to sing.
- We bumped into the boss the next day as we had coincidentally decided to eat at one of his restaurants (after we had tried to hike up the mountain but found out that our destination: gondola was actually a gondola under construction….) He then invited us to sit with him, drink coffee….oh and make a Happy Hour menu for him. As payment, he would treat us to dinner…us and the two random American girls he saw walk by and sent us to fetch.
- Dinner was one of the most extravagant I have ever seen in China. We were even serenaded by some woman with a horrifyingly high voice dressed in voodoo doll clothing. Afterward, we went straight to his other bar where we were treated like royalty. Lots of dancing and singing (on the stage…with the microphone) ensued. Finally, I forced everyone to go to the karaoke bar where I decided to sing every song, even Chinese songs that I didn’t know the words to. Successful night. I think so.
- Next day, we biked with Chelsea (friend who is currently teaching at my old school) and Seb (her boyfriend from home). The highlight was when we helped some local villagers roll a gigantic cement pillar. Afterward, we bumped into the lao ban (lao ban means boss). This would result in another night of “working for the lao ban with our performances” for free drinks.
- We discovered that Lao Ban’s name is actually Lao Hu (tiger). He then brought us to the Bad Monkey, a popular Westerner hangout bar. I’m pretty sure he kicked people out of a table because he wanted to have one of the front tables. I mean, we did have a trophy, and we should be able to put it on display.
- Our last day, we basically just walked around and hung out. UNTIL, we saw Mr. Water and Slicked-Back-Hair at the Bad Monkey. Then we sat down and drank with them for a while which was great because we were able to witness Mr. Water jumping over a bench and run outside to what appeared to be a fight between him and an old XinJiang drug dealer. It was nothing. Mr. Water got his hash to smoke out of the hookah and all was good.
*note: in Dali, somewhere between 10 and 20 different people drank out of JB. and this is probably a big reason for what happened next in LiJiang
I’m about to leave and begin traveling. Craig, Vinny, and I booked a flight to Kunming, Yunnan, but other than that we have nothing set up. The general plan is Yunnan for a bit then to Laos. I’ll do my best to update as we go along. For now, peace out.
I went back to Cili on Monday to hang out for a couple days. It typically turned from a couple days to about five, but a few great things happened that make the trip well worth it.
So, although I had already bought my bus ticket, I had to go to the atm and reached the bus about 5-10 minutes before departure. The workers panicked because there weren’t any more seats. What this meant was that I had to sit in the seat right next to the driver…the one on the steps. This seat was broken and things got awkward when I dropped my phone down the steps towards the end of the trip (the headphones came out and my song started playing out loud..it was on shuffle and just at that moment, a recording of Bianca singing Gavin Degraw came on…so yes, he could hear that). The one upside of this seat was that it was a front row ticket to beautiful China….
View from the front
The first day, I arrived at about 7 and hung around the campus for a little while before dinner. Some past students attacked me and commented on how fashion my new shoes are…they are pretty fashion if I might say so myself. If being stared at in public doesn’t happen enough in small town China, throw on some silver moon shoes, and well..yeah. A couple other girls were able to decipher the words on my obnoxious trucker hat (most people usually can’t). “Women wish his love” – this discovery caused an outrage amongst the crew of twenty or so girls that were swarmed around me.
After dinner with some friends, most people went home, but Tank, a geography teacher, accompanied me to my street restaurant. Unfortunately, my best friend, Huang Xing Guo, was at the bar, so we jumped back in our taxi and demanded that he take us down the street to the bar.
The bar is now called V8…like the juice. It used to be Street Story Pub, an American-styled bar that played the world’s loudest music. However, this new bar is more of a Chinese-style club…just miniaturized. And well, walking in was extremely overwhelming. There was a short man singing on the stage which was right near the entrance. He was singing some Chinese song, of course, but he stopped when I walked in to chug an entire beer in about 2 seconds. The first table was occupied by Fany, previously known as Sunshine, a friend of mine, and his friends. The second table was where Huang Xing Guo and his friends were at, although HXG had apparently gone home because he was too drunk.
There was a lot of shouting, hugging, gaping at my shoes…normal things. Then a beer was put in my hand and I was thrown onto the stage. I was made to chug it in front of the club and then told to dance. I refused at first and went behind the DJ booth to look at the English songs. The DJ was very set on me dancing to “My Humps,” and well, nothing could ever top Craig’s dancing to that…so I refused.
I was then forced to leave and go all over the town: street restaurant, a different bar (had a lady boy from Thailand but the bar was closed), and back to V8. This time, I sang “Larger than Life” by Backstreet Boys and listened to “My Humps”- the gap-toothed DJ with blond highlights really, really wanted to play it.
People tried to pay for my hotel, but I just stayed in Fany’s guest bedroom.
The next day, I was almost kidnapped and taken into the countryside to eat dog. I refused. Then at the restaurant we did go to, someone insisted upon dog. Once again, this was a no-go.
Since it’s 5 days long…I’m just going to have to give highlights:
A man kept screaming “Please, touch my card,” in an attempt at saying “Please, touch my cock,” to people at a different table. Note: I did not teach him this. My friend, Leo, heard it in a movie.
Someone put some food in my bowl, and in China, if someone does that, you basically have to eat it.. I asked what it was. No one knew. After eating, they asked the waiter and then they all laughed. “Dog Penis,” they told me. I wasn’t sure if this was true…it tasted like sea food. And they then said they were joking, but I noticed that no one would eat it afterward (even when I put it in their bowls…double standard, anyone?) and they never explained what it really was.
I missed the last night of the ladyboy performing. That was sad.
seriously, a ladyboy in cili
One day, Mr. Tian’s son would not look away from the computer screen, regardless of what we said or did to him. I started putting random things on his head and taking pictures because 1 – I was bored and 2 – I am immature.
mr. tian's son
first was the hood
then the red thing
the game he was playing
I went to KTV with random people I had just met at a street restaurant, all of whom did not speak English. The guy paying vomited in the bathroom before we began singing. I then sang “I Want Love” by Elton John–a sleeper pick, I think (it went over really well).
So, for the first time, I got one of those massages that I had always imagined….the kind where an Asian woman basically runs all over your back. There were even poles on the ceiling to assist her acrobatic moves. At some other times, she even put me in some wrestling holds. It was painful and oddly satisfying. Check out the bed (I was too big for it and it was basically just a sheet on a wooden block…not too comfortable).
note the poles on the ceiling
Huang Xing Guo called me one afternoon and said that I couldn’t go back to Changsha, and he was coming to get me. This turned out to be a good decision since he picked me up and led me to his friend’s training school. There we found his friends…a group of men in their mid-forties skipping around drunkenly and taking turns doing calligraphy on the ground. They all kept repeating themselves, and behaving erratically (ex: bringing out a giant scroll of drawings and throwing it on the ground while screaming). One man even had his arm give out that was supporting his weight while he drew. This resulted in his forehead bashing off the ground. Everyone then laughed at him. They also made me write my signature…then stamped it with my fingerprint.
mr. tian doing calligraphy
Below is a video of some of the guys:
Wang Ming Fu, a tea shop owner and one of my best friends from last year, returned…this meant that I had to drink the vile baijiu. And this also made HXG even drunker…check out this video of him trying to steal eggs. At first, Linda pointed out to me that he was stealing eggs off the table and putting them in his pockets. Then I started taking a video, and he thought that I was taking a picture…so he posed, holding the eggs. Everyone then started yelling at me to only take one picture…but, it was a video. He remains in one position for about 1 minute and 45 seconds. You don’t have to watch the whole thing to get the idea…but you can, if you want.
Wang Ming Fu cut his finger on a bottle that he opened (with a bottle opener). No one cared or seemed shocked. They just told him to go across the street to the hospital and get it patched up..so he did.
I escaped in the morning and went straight back to Changsha…although Cili was fun, it’s an exhausting place to be for more than 10 hours….never mind 4 full days.
shengdi, brothers
proving that my phone actually takes pictures (even if shitty pics)
wc is an actual alcoholic
color wolf, huang xing guo, WC, and wang ming fu
Some random old lady chopping up some vegetables on the street:
So I realize this was ages ago, but I just realized I hadn’t posted about it. Well, at least I think I haven’t posted about it. If I did, then forgive me for doing it for a second time.
Anyway, I have always wanted a tattoo. It is just something that I wanted since before I was 18. However, I had no clue what I wanted to get, and therefore, I never got one. And honestly, I was always wondering how painful it would be (as I was a bit afraid that I wouldn’t be able to endure it since I’m not the toughest lad in the bunch). So, I wanted to make sure I got one that I liked…and didn’t regret immediately (i.e. the word groovy on my ass, or something..).
After much searching, I failed to find anything I liked.
Finally, one day I found a picture of a tiger that I thought was kind of cool. Since I was born during the Year of the Tiger according to the Chinese calendar and my first full year in China was during the Year of the Tiger, I thought getting a tiger tattoo would be something that made at least a little sense. Still, I did not immediately run to a tattoo parlor and get inked up. For one, my mother had basically always said she would disown me if i got a tattoo because she hates them, but also, because I wasn’t sure if it was exactly what I wanted.
But then, over the summer, I discovered I was the only male in my family that had yet to get a tattoo (therefore, my mother couldn’t use the disowning as a threat anymore), and I realized that I still liked it. A friend of mine once told me about someone else who waited a full year after deciding on a tattoo before finalizing it, just to make sure that they still liked it. Well, this had been many months and I still liked it…soo, I decided I would get it once I returned to China (tattoos are cheaper in China and wouldn’t it make more sense to get my tattoo related to China, in China?) Oh, and ALSO my mom actually didn’t hate it when I showed her it.
Still, I know it would take more action to actually get one. This push came one night when my friend, Craig, called me. He has many tattoos, but he wanted to get more.
“Hey man, what ya doin?” he asked when I picked up my phone.
“Nothin. Just goin to get some food.”
“Hey, do you still wanna get a tattoo?” he said.
“Um. Yeah. Now?”
“Not now, but I am going to go tomorrow.”
So there we were. “Tomorrow” we both went to a tattoo parlor he had found. He got a crazy large tattoo on his crazy large back (not fat..he’s 6’9″). And well, it was taking forever. So I called this Chinese guy we knew and asked where he got his. My friend, Michaela, accompanied me to go check it out.
craig getting stencilled up
craig in the massage chair clearly not made for 6'9" people
And so it begins!
After finally finding the place in some apartment building, we knocked on the doo
r. It was what appeared to be a laundromat inside someone’s apartment. But then we were led upstairs to the “tattoo parlor.”
I showed the guy what I wanted and said, “something like this.” He told me that he would sketch a couple drawings similar to it with a Chinese twist, and that I could come back the next day to undergo the pain. It would cost 500RMB (about 70 dollars).
The next day, I returned with Craig, Michaela, and 2 friends from Xiangtan. The tattooist showed me two sketches he had made. One looked like a dragon and the other looked like a lizard. I had asked for a tiger. Therefore, I just told him to go with the original.
So, here’s a series of pics from the surgery I underwent:
My skilled and fashionable tattoo artist
He must be showing me something on my back (there is another mirror behind me that you can't see)
Preparing for what I expected to be the most painful thing ever
And so it began...
Casually enduring the pain
Finished product...quit looking at my jacked back and notice my new tattoo
A closer shot of it
Happiest man alive...
my 2nd tattoo
So the last picture “my 2nd tattoo” is totally real. Right? Not one of those tattoos that you wet and stick on you. But, I did wear it to the car game show we appeared on, and they made sure to point it out and ask about it. I think they thought it was real, but they were probably just making fun of me.
Anyway, that’s about it. The pain wasn’t nearly as bad as what I had expected, although I did get a bit lightheaded towards the end as it took 2 hours and 10 minutes. I spoke like 5 words the whole time…I basically just sat there listening to my friends idly chat as I was afraid of moving and scarring myself with a horrible ink mistake. I was pretty sure I would make him mess up as I was laughing hysterically at Nicole’s terrible story she made up as she perused through a tattoo book.
And well, the best thing about now is I have what Stenn likes to call the “tiger shirt.” The tiger shirt likes to be put to use at the club in Cili. And while wearing the tiger shirt, I can do anything.
It never fails to surprise me how okay people here seem to be with anything and everything. The most unusual and strange things can happen and people don’t give it a second thought. While this isn’t that unusual or strange, it still surprises me….
At the bottom of my tiny street in the middle of no where is where we catch buses. And I usually end up riding the bus at least 1 time per day. What usually happens is I leisurely walk down the street peering through the 2 trees half-obscuring my vision of the approaching buses, keeping an eye out for my bus (702 if I am going to the gym/140 if I am going downtown…802 used to go to the gym but one day it just decided to change its course and no longer goes to the gym, making it useless to me).
This is the stree that I walk down to reach the bus stop
This is the direction that my bus goes
This is the direction that my buses come from
The 702 bus is the worst because it is always crowded to the point where you might as well be glued to the 40 people bumping up against you. The 802, as I had mentioned above as being now useless, literally did just change its route one day. Now, it turns about 3-4 bus stops before the one where I want to get off. So, if I am feeling extremely antsy, I will still take it and then switch buses or walk the rest of the way. But, most times, I idiotically wait for the 702. I say idiotically because besides the fact that it is way too crowded, it sometimes only comes ever 20 or so minutes and then doesn’t even stop to pick up new riders.
When the bus doesn’t stop to pick up people, I sigh and shrivel up into a pile of despair while the people around me pretend we hadn’t just been punked. The first time it happened I looked at everyone’s faces and realized that they could have cared less, despite the fact that I knew for a fact many of them were definitely waiting for that same bus as me.
So after many hours of waiting in the miserable cold, when I finally do catch my bus, it sometimes decides that it can do whatever it wants. So if there is a lot of traffic on our road…it doesn’t matter. Alternative routes…no problem.
“Today, this traffic is too much. I will take the side street that skips about 8 or so bus stops. No problem.”
Seriously, the bus sometimes tries to avoid traffic and takes a side street that goes through what I imagine to be a small, hidden village here on the outskirts of Changsha. This doesnt really bother me because it doesn’t skip my stop, but I just don’t quite understand how this is, well, okay. It’s a world with no rules I guess. Like when there is a red light and the bus driver decides, “Whatever dude, red lights don’t apply to pedestrians so why don’t I just pretend to be a pedestrian.” What? Well, what they do is drive a little to the right, a fake right if you will, and drive in the white lines designated as the area where pedestrians should cross the street. A bus is a little bit bigger than your average human being, but it doesn’t matter. This is apparently the best technique to stick it to the man….aka skip those completely unnecessary red lights.
That’s it for now. It’s almost time to get my students final exams. Woot woot! Time to grade..all day.
Not sure how many Vlogs I’ll keep up with…but here’s another one. I guess it takes less time than writing. And I do like talking. But talking to a computer displaying my face is strange and kind of sad.
This one may be the most awkward of them all. I think so anyway. In writing, I can kind of hide behind my words. But…in a vlog, you can see me! I’m naked.
Hey, Mom. My mom is my number 1 reader. I think…since she comments on practically anything. Although, Mom, I still am a bit offended that you only said to send your love to Will when I wrote about him being kicked by some crazy man. I was slapped (the hardest slap ever witnessed in person – said Will) in the same post. Perhaps you were just sure that my brute strength and beer muscles protected me.
K. Well, here’s my Vlog. I should get back to recording grades for the 10o Sky’s, Becky’s, Lucky’s, and
Daisy’s that are my students. P.S. Favorite name of a student this year: Neck. –Why is your name “Neck?” She thought it was funny. Oh, and I strangely enough have some girls with blatant boy names. “My name is Robert. Yes, I know its a boy name. But that’s what makes it special. Because I’m a girl.”
Here is an excerpt from a conversation with my dad. Keep in mind that its written verbatim…I record all conversations just in case I need to blackmail people. Here:
“I didn’t actually see your virtual tour thing, but I heard it cuz your mother was watching, HAHA. Why did you do that?”
“What do you mean, dear father?”
“Why would anyone want to see your apartment?”
“I don’t know, father. Perhaps people are a interested in seeing what it looks like where I live…”
“No.”
“Well, I am sorry to have ruined your day. But that’s what blogs are for, to inform people about what you are doing/how you feel…”
“I don’t understand blogs and I don’t understand why you would have a blog.”
“Oh father, how you have hurt my feelings. You do know how sensitive I am.”
“Whatever. Talk to your mom.”
Anyway. My father never reads my blog so he won’t see…But my next VLOG post is dedicated to him. It’s about farting bugs…definitely a suitable topic to be dedicated to my father (if you know what I mean..) Oh, and I realize this is super awkward.
“Hi” I respond. Usually. People are always yelling “Hello” and contrary to the Asian stereotype of pronouncing L’s like R’s (Herro), they seem to over-pronounce the L. HELLLLLO! Like that. Some people get annoyed. But, I don’t really. If I don’t respond then I’m clearly in a bad mood. But the other day, some guy yelled HELLO in my face, and when I said, “Hello” back to him, he yelled, “HELLO!!!!” again. Baffled at how to respond I kept walking. He was definitely a crazy, but he looked at me with such great expectations of a response that I felt at a complete loss.
“This weather is absolutely abominable, wouldn’t you agree there fine homeless man?” I could have said that, I guess.
